The Victor
by quothme
Summary: There's a legend in District 12, passed down through the years, that tells of a lost soul, a miner who turned left when his brethren turned right. They call him the Blind Man. No longer alive, but unable to die. Dark AU.
1. Chapter 1

There's a legend in District 12, passed down through the years, that tells of a lost soul in one of the earliest generations after the Great War. It's from the time when they were still relearning the skills to coax coal from its bed in the earth, when the monthly injection the Capitol sent to keep the miners alert despite fourteen hours of darkness still had side effects.

Father had told his daughters the story once, as they lay huddled together under layers of threadbare blankets and sheets, his weight sagging the mattress. The story of one of those early miners who got separated from his fellows. He turned left when the rest of them turned right and couldn't find his way back to the light. But instead of collapsing and dying, like so many others do, he went mad, clawing at the rocks until his fingers bled and he sucked them dry. Eating lichen until he found something else to crave.

They called him the Blind Man. Blind, because his sightless eyes had long ago crystallized, petrified into milky white. According to the myth, his grasping tongue oozes black with coal, which he now eats by the fistful. "Like candy?" a wide-eyed Prim had asked, and their father had just laughed.

Lost miners, the ones who make it back to the surface, surviving the day or week that it takes a rescue crew to find them, sometimes say that they could hear the Blind Man, somewhere deep in the bowels of the mine, down shafts blocked off because they're no longer safe. Laughing, cackling like the devil himself in the very pits of hell.

No longer alive, yet unable to die.

"Daddy," Prim had shrieked as the door swung shut, eclipsing the meager light of the oil lamp in the kitchen. "Don't let the Blind Man get me!"

"He can't, little duck," Father had said, popping his head back in with a grin. "He's stuck down in the mines, stuck in the dark and the cold."

Prim frowned. "But you go down there."

Father tweaked her nose. "Don't you worry about me. I stay near the light."

That night, Prim woke the neighbors with her screams, windows winking on one by one. In the morning, when the sun's rays had chased away lingering cobwebs of fear, and Prim could speak of it without trembling, Mother chastised Father for telling the girls such stories, before bed no less. But Katniss knew, from the way that Mother looked like she was trying not to smile, that she wasn't really mad. You couldn't be mad when Father started singing like that, a song he made up on the spot about a harmless old Blind Man who went tumbling down the stairs.

In less than a month, Father was dead.

"Did the Blind Man get him?" Prim asked her, voicing their shared fear the night after they wore their best clothes to the Meadow with all the other families. Katniss had done Prim's hair; one of the braids was crooked. She'd ironed their dresses, too. Everyone from the Seam was there, and many from the Town besides, including the Undersees. The Mayor said the eulogy, and they each crumbled a handful of dirt into a shallow hole, empty. Symbolic.

Everyone but Mother, who just stood there. Not crying, not anything.

Afterward, as the remaining miners made quick work of filling in the grave, people kept stopping in front of Mother.

I'm sorry, they said.

He was a good man, they said.

He's gone to a better place, they said.

Mother said nothing, but they kept saying these things to her, again and again, blur after blur of pale and dark, until finally someone stopped in front of Mother and said something different, something new.

"When he sang, even the birds stopped and listened." Katniss looked up from her boots to see a man who looked like the sun. The Baker.

Mother looked up at him too, her gaze softening. They looked at each other for a long moment, and then the Baker inclined his head, almost a salute, and turned away. Only then did Katniss see the boy dogging his steps. The youngest.

He turned back to look at her, and his eyes were a lost sea. This time, there was nothing he could give that would make it better. That single glimpse haunts and taunts her, like so many others captured in her memory through the years. Memories that she takes out and inspects like the old photographs Mother keeps of Father, in an old grain tin, bundled with yellowed string.

Katniss is older now, and she knows the Blind Man is just a myth. Likely told and retold by the mining families to keep their children from sneaking down into the mine on those rare days the miners have off. But now, there's another monster in District 12. A real one, one that walks above the earth instead of cowering beneath it.

They call him the Victor.

Ø

Nature itself herds her toward the unknown, to the place the town avoids like a nest of tracker jackers, the place she thinks of as a tomb.

It begins slowly, a mere tease of the leaves under her feet, strewing them lazily across her path like landmines. The doe she's been tracking for half a mile is already skittish, uneasy from wafts of leather and sweat and the blood of other unfortunates, despite the underbrush that Katniss periodically sprinkles into the air to mask the scent. Now, the fragile leaves underfoot add an additional complication to her path, forcing her to regulate her steps to avoid further betraying her presence.

She's close now, easily within range, the closest she's been in years. This is it. This is the day she'll finally fell her first deer, despite Gale's taunts, despite the fact that Gale's not here to help capture or carry it.

She draws her arrow back, the motion as natural to her as breathing. The deer continues foraging, taking tiny steps this way and that. Softly, she exhales into the string, willing it to fly straight and true. One more second…

Without warning, the doe bolts, its tail a white flag that leaps and teases amid greens and browns. Adrenaline screams _now_ _or never_, and her fingers twitch to release, but wisdom ultimately prevails. She lowers her bow, having learned long ago that chancing a parting shot merely costs her an arrow.

A few beats later, wind surges through the trees, brandishing branches like whips, stirring tornadoes of gold, orange, and brown, and electrifying the hair around her face. In its wake (an ominous stillness) comes the gloom. The sun melts into clouds the color of ash. She can smell it now, the reason for the doe's fear, the reason why even the birds' idle chatter has ceased. Rain.

And here she is, flat-footed and at least a mile out. Oh, she's not concerned about herself getting wet, but the pelts draped about her pack won't draw as high a price if they're damp and mottled.

This wouldn't have happened if Gale were here. He always keeps one eye on the sky, for weather and…other things. And he wouldn't have let her follow the deer so long anyway. "Stick to rabbits and squirrels," he always says. "They're more your size." Turning, she begins to lope back the way she came, wind nipping at her heels. It will be close, so she decides to risk it.

The uneven color of the jacket she wears testifies to the last time she'd gotten it wet, one of the few other times when she and Gale had been caught unawares. No one in the District bothers to try and predict the weather, like she's heard they do in some of the other Districts. Folks in 12 don't care, as most of them spend their days below the earth, where it neither rains nor shines. Down there, the forecast is always black.

After she slips under the fence, dipping lower than necessary so as not to snag her pack on the wire, she hesitates. Above, the sky grumbles, spurring her into action. She darts left, acting on instinct. Maybe because the nearest shelter is left. Or maybe it's the rain. When it rains, she can't help but think of that day. The day in which she'd sat under a tree, swallowed in her father's sweater.

Wind surges, urging her on as she reaches her destination. A rusted iron arch creaks a forlorn welcome. As she passes through it, she steps into a graveyard. Here there is shelter a-plenty, rows of empty porches where she could sit and wait out the storm. The Peacekeepers are notorious for shirking their usual patrols when the weather turns. She and Gale have counted on this for years, often using rain as an excuse to slip out into the forest.

As Katniss walks the silent corridor, the only movement she sees comes from herself, reflected in dark glass windows, gaping eyes in a skull. She sees movement and startles, whirling to face herself, reflected in dark glass. Lifeless windows, like empty eye sockets on a decayed cadaver. It's too quiet. Nothing lives here.

Each house she passes is a tombstone, representing a life no longer lived. All except for the one on the end of the street, the one farthest from the town, on the fringes of their civilization. She doesn't know if he chose the spot or if the Capitol chose it for him, as a final reminder that he's no longer of their world.

This house, it's a monument to not one but twenty-three graves. The person inside lives with their blood on his hands. This is where her steps are taking her, where the impending rain has driven her, to seek shelter with a person to whom she's never spoken, who from all accounts will not want to speak to her.

From the looks of it, she wouldn't even know it was occupied. Then her hunter's eyes pick up the signs—grass a little more worn here, a clod of dirt clinging to the edge of the porch. The bit of mud chills her, this stark reminder that a person does live here. She should turn around. Right now. Leave this nature-forsaken place and head back to town, to where she belongs. Or she could wait out the rain under twenty-three other porches. There's no reason it has to be this one.

As if on cue, the heavens unleash their fury. Katniss gasps and surges up the porch, cradling her pelts from the sudden onslaught. Her boots stomp loud and heavy on the warped wood, so much for subtle. Near the door handle, a small white button beckons. She doesn't know what it is (houses in town and in the Seam aren't this high-tech), but she can guess. The peal of the doorbell echoes in the space beyond. It's like a symphony of pickaxes striking rock. When the sound dies, nothing moves. The air is charged with a certain stillness, the kind that she's often experienced in the forest, when a deer is nearby, invisible and soundless.

She thinks of knocking, of calling out who she is, just in case that might sway him to speak. But then she thinks better of it. If he's silent, he probably has a reason. Or he might not even be there at all, her mind playing tricks in this place filled with ghosts.

She sits cross-legged on the porch and watches the world through rain.


	2. Chapter 2

She's late.

Rain traps her on the porch for a solid hour before it finally peters out, spent. If she'd been delayed much longer, she might have missed the merchants. They close shop when the sun hides below the earth, retreating upstairs or, for the few who don't already live directly above their establishment, trekking home before curfew. As it is, she'll have only a few minutes with each. Some may have already given up on her.

Rooba the butcher is still waiting, a bare bulb illuminating the side door down the alley, hidden from prying eyes. At her knock, it opens to an apron spattered with the day's blood and gore. Rooba's tired eyes brighten when she sees who it is.

"Wasn't sure you'd make it, what with the rain and all."

"Almost didn't," Katniss agrees as she tips her pack open, careful and casual.

Rooba plucks the fattest rabbit and three of the squirrels. She clucks appreciatively at Katniss' aim, the dark hollow of their eye. Then Katniss is off, trading more meat and pelts for spices, yarn, and a block of soap made from animal fat. She saves the baker for last. His wide apron is coated in a savory blend of flour, butter, and sugar. As always, he gives her a smile and a loaf.

As the final door closes, Katniss skirts the main square, nearly deserted in this late hour. The Hall of Justice is lit up like a furnace. She's truly late now, flirting at being caught past curfew. The big clock shows less than a half hour until those heavy doors open and the Peacekeepers emerge for their final rounds.

But had Katniss not been so late, she would have missed it. Would have been long gone by this time, safe in the Hob, which the Peacekeepers conveniently bypass at this time of night, courtesy of a little arrangement they have with Ripper. Had she not been so late, she would have heard about it the following morning.

But she's late, and so she's passing through the square when she hears it—a laugh. It's not the laugh that attracts her attention so much as the way it cuts off abruptly. And it's not a good kind of laugh.

The air hums, like when the fence flows with electricity. Invisible yet deadly.

Following the source of the sound, she cuts down another alley, a mere slice of air between two buildings, one a charred skeleton of the former Bakery, long abandoned. Peering around a corner, she sees a cluster of boys, facing away from her, necks craned for a better view of something she can't see.

On first glance, it looks innocuous. A crowd of boys, messing around, having a good time, maybe wrestling a little as the townies are wont to do. She doesn't recognize many of them from this angle, but there's one figure that's unmistakable—the burly shoulders of Bo, standing at the front of the pack. He has someone in a headlock, someone with dirty-blond hair. A townie, then.

She's seen variations of this theme many a time in the school hallways, particularly her last year, when all the older boys had graduated.

Bo's given name is Beauregard, after a Capital star that many ladies of the town (the ones who had time to watch Capitol programming) fancied that year, including his mother. Katniss remembers her classmates giggling, on the first day of school, when the teacher was calling attendance. Until Bo punched the nearest kid, mid-laugh, and knocked out two front teeth. No one teased him after that.

From then on, he was Bo, for short. Even the teachers called him Bo. They forgot what his real name was. But he never forgot.

As she watches, Bo roughs his catch up a bit, yanking him around, making the person fight to keep his feet. Everyone laughs, him making the little puppet dance. Then Bo releases him and shoves. The person staggers back, and Katniss sees his face.

That face.

The one she'll never forget.

She freezes, and it's like she's standing on the edge of a precipice. This isn't just a crowd of boys messing around, having a good time. This is no game, no friendly wrestling match. This is something deep, something serious. She takes a closer look, evaluating with new eyes. These are indeed Townie boys, raucous, their ears and necks reddened with artificial courage. A few Seam girls cling to arms on the periphery, providing their own type of encouragement.

Katniss thinks back to the rows of buildings lining the town square, of the storefronts that are already dark, a row of missing teeth in a skull. Anyone who might help is too far away. She thinks of her bow and knife, safe in a fallen log. Also out of reach. This isn't like when they were back in school, no teachers nearby to intervene. The Peacekeepers aren't scheduled to start making their final rounds for another several minutes.

She's alone, then.

Her first instinct is to turn, walk back out of the mouth of the alley, and hustle on her way. You don't interfere with a pack of wolves sharing a kill. It's suicide. She knows she should leave them be, let nature take its course. Survival of the fittest.

She should leave.

She needs to.

Gale is waiting for her.

But she can't leave. She knows she can't. She can't because there, over there, is the big oak tree she'd once used as shelter from the rain, cradling herself in her father's old sweater. There, a splash of mud that used to hold pigs.

Then she hears it—that hollow, sucking sound of something impacting flesh, that thin veneer over bone. A sound that every child in every District knows, the one they hear after mothers warn them to close their eyes, even with their hands clapped over their ears. The sound they dream about.

Here, in this spot, she can't turn away. Because he hadn't turned away that day, either. So she hunter-steps closer, slipping her game bag over her head and stashing it in a dark crevasse behind a barrel, swollen with the spring rains. Drawing a shaky breath, she steps off the edge and plummets into the abyss.

She's never been in a fight in her life. Never needed to. Not with Gale. But he's not here now. He's across town, with the other men, at the Hob. Where she should be.

So when Bo bends, retrieving another rock from a nearby pile of rubble, this one larger than his fist, she does the only thing she can do. She pushes forward, slicing through her former peers, and she steps in front of him, one hand half-raised.

The hum of voices ceases, like that rare moment in the forest when a twig snaps beneath an errant foot. She can feel her heartbeat, thrumming in her chest. Her face feels hard, frozen.

Bo squints at her in the gloom, harsh brows pulled low on his face. With her dark hair and braid, she could be anyone. But standing here, tall and unflinching, she's not just anyone. Someone hisses her name, low and quick, like a curse word. They know what her presence means. They know who her presence means. Maybe, if she's lucky, they'll think Gale nearby.

Bo eyes her hand, the one disappearing into the side pocket of her jacket. Yes, she tells him with her stance, her eyes. She pretends very hard that in her jacket is her knife.

"Move aside," he warns, still hefting that rock. But when she doesn't, not even a slight shift on the balls of her feet, he adds, "This has nothing to do with you."

He sounds calm, almost rational. Others around him nod. They can't see the predatory craze in his eyes. "Move aside," they echo, Fred and Jay and Mason. Boys she went to school with, all of them. And not one of them will meet her gaze.

Emboldened, Bo says, "I don't want to hurt you," and his tone implies, But I will. This has escalated almost past the point of no return, the dark and the drink have driven them too far down this path. No turning back, they've made their choice, one that was years in the making. Waiting for the right opportunity, perhaps. Surprising that it hasn't happened before.

Behind her, something creaks, like the leather of a pair of boots. She feels a presence at her back, knows the Victor is close. He understood the threat, too. Why is he stepping forward now, when he hadn't before, when it will only make things worse? Bo's gaze shifts from her face to somewhere behind her. She sees it in Bo's eyes now. Fear.

Time for her to say something, to fan that flame.

"Hurt me, and he'll hurt you." She's calm. It's ambiguous, that she doesn't say a name.

Behind her, a voice says, "Don't." Low enough for her alone to hear. A warning. He's close, at her ear. She should be, but she's not afraid.

She continues, loud and clear, so everyone will hear. "You throw that rock, and Gale will end you." She would have preferred not to use his name, but it's the only way.

"The mighty Gale," Bo sneers. "Insubstantial as a gust of wind." But she's given him pause. Back in school, Bo had messed with Rory once, the year after Gale graduated to go work in the mines. Bo hadn't come to school the rest of the week.

"I'm not afraid of him. Not Gale," he practically spits the word, "and certainly not this miserable worm you're trying to protect."

But Bo is afraid. She can see it in his eyes, in every plane of his body, his hands that shake, and not just from the liquor.

"How about the Peacekeepers, then? Not afraid of them, either?"

More murmurs from Bo's crew. They're looking back now, toward the Justice building. Some of the girls have stepped away, are pulling on their man's arms.

Miraculously, the sirens sound, three short pulses that signify curfew. That's all it takes. Bo drops the rock, and it lands heavily near her left foot. He stares her down for one more moment, then turns and strides off into the darkness, away from the square. The rest follow, no more than a pack of wild dogs, tails and ears wilted. Only Bo looks back at her, a glance like a poisoned dart. He will never forget.

The night is still and silent again. All of the storefronts have winked out like fireflies, leaving them in the gloom.

They're alone.

Adrenaline turns to fear, which feathers up her spine. They're alone, in a back alley, at night. She's just saved the Victor's life, but that might not mean anything. Not to him.

Slowly, so as not to startle him, she turns to survey the damage. The collar of his shirt is rumpled and ripped, hair damp and askew, falling into his eyes. It's longer than she remembers it, and ragged, a far cry from the sleek slick it had been in the Capitol. He's crouched low, collecting dark shapes from the ground, stuffing them back into the bag from which they'd spilled. What could he possibly need, that had driven him to town at this hour?

When she reaches for something near her feet, something in a long, thin box, he snatches it away, before she can touch. Then he stands, but angled away, as though her nearness makes him uncomfortable. The moon chisels his profile, his strong nose, his jaw, clenched.

This is the first time she's been so close to him, even when they were in school. He's more compact than she's used to, after Gale's rangy limbs. Smaller than you'd think, after everything. Deceptively small. The cameras had always made him look bigger. She remembers a close-up of his face, towering over them all gathered in the square. Larger than life.

But standing in front of him now, she sees that they're almost the same height.

She's thought of this moment for years, what she'd say if she could. Thank you. Or maybe, I'm sorry. These simple words, they don't seem like enough.

But he speaks first.

"You shouldn't have done that." His jaw is tight, twitching. "I didn't need your help."

It's like a blow, pushing the air from her lungs. She can't breathe. The first thing he's ever said to her. After everything. After what she's just done for him.

Then he's gone, surging past her, carefully not touching, leaving nothing but cold in his wake.

She looks down to see a lump in the mud, something he missed. After a moment, she recognizes the shape, one she's seen a thousand times. It's a squirrel, with nothing but a dark hollow as its right eye. One of hers, likely one that she had just sold to the butcher, now ruined in the melee.

And the Victor hadn't even looked at it, hadn't even tried to salvage it.

Just left it like that, trampled in the dirt.


	3. Chapter 3

Unlike in the weak light of day, the Hob beckons at night, gold leaking from between the cracks in its haphazard boards, warped by weather and grayed by time. Inside, denizens of the Seam congregate around the warm glow of kerosene lanterns like flies, blood buzzing and bellies laughing, celebrating the remnants of their freedom, before it's back to the everlasting grind.

Katniss strides cleanly through the throng of miners, head high because she long ago earned the right to be here. Ruddy faces with pink cheeks beam at her, as clean as they'll be for a week. Those who know her by name say so, many asking whether their favorite dish will be on the menu. Katniss knows some of them only by their preferred meat or by Gale's nicknames for them—Stumpy and Merl and One-eyed Zeek.

She stops first at Greasy Sae's corner to deposit the last (and best) of her bounty, which the old woman tucks away for tomorrow's stew. With two hands, Katniss cradles a wooden bowl of today's masterpiece to a back table (it's just the way she likes it, from the bottom of the pot, swimming in seasoning), where Gale has saved her a rickety stool.

"I had to arm wrestle seven men for that spot," he says, warm mouth in her ear, and her own mouth twitches because no he didn't. This crew, Gale's crew, they aren't stingy with their camaraderie. There's always a seat for her, even where one didn't exist before.

Then she sits and sips, luxuriating in the warmth of the stew and the fellowship and Gale's smile. She remembers how, only a few short years ago, before the mines, she and Gale had kept their own company, slinking through the town like a pair of stray dogs, not really part of any pack, never sticking around after divesting themselves of their wares to partake in the fellowship at the Hob, which had persisted through the years like stubborn weeds through concrete.

But when Gale turned eighteen and went to work in the mines, everything changed. After some basic hazing, which involved purposefully leaving him behind to brave the inky black alone for several hours, Gale was accepted as a full-fledged member of the mining clan. Particularly after his brethren discovered that, despite his youth, Gale could heft a pickaxe as good as any, and better than most.

"Being down there in the dark," he'd told her once, "you form a bond I can't explain."

For a time, Katniss had been uncertain of her place in this new world. Given his demanding hours, Gale could no longer walk her and Prim home from school, and he could hunt with her only once a week, on his day off. Even then, he was often too tired to rise before the sun, like she did. She remembers initially resenting his late nights at the Hob, of him smelling of coal spice and drink. He didn't smell like the woods anymore. He didn't smell like Gale.

But then Gale started inviting her to the Hob as well, not taking her inevitable refusal for an answer. When she finally caved, more on account of the benefits to her trading than anything else, thank you, he made sure she sat with him and was included in the group. Slowly, she began to smile at the other men. Slowly, she learned to respond to their teasing, and eventually fire back her own, to much hooting and hollering.

"You smile only in the woods," Gale used to tell her, but that's no longer true, as evidenced by the twitch in her lips as she listens to Thom tell a story about the newest Peacekeeper, who's having some difficulty adjusting to 12. Apparently, he's allergic to coal dust.

"They're standing there, right, at complete attention," Thom is saying, "…and then he sneezes all down the front of Cray's uniform." Everyone laughs, herself included. "I'm talking a spray of snot." This elicits further howls. Gale squeezes her knee and grins. "Needless to say, he's on shit duty for the next three months."

It's a great visual—a Peacekeeper, in that pristine white uniform, on his knees cleaning up excrement.

She knows that she should tell Gale about what happened with Bo. But she hesitates, doesn't draw Gale aside to give him the news. Maybe she'll tell him later, when he's walking her home. Maybe she doesn't want to bring that kind of darkness to this place, where there is light.

Or maybe it's not about Bo at all.

Afterward, when the stars have thoroughly salted the sky, Gale walks her home, even though he has to be up again before these stars have faded, even though home for him is the opposite direction than it is for her. Safer, he says, to always travel in pairs.

"Good hunting?" His voice is muted, sated, his earlier ebullience mellowing the farther they drift from the Hob lights. He'd opted out of the woods today, after an especially late night on Saturday. She suspects he was in the back room in the Hob, behind the black curtain, where she'd never been.

"Decent," she says lightly.

Gale groans. "Details, woman." He's always asking her this, wanting the stats. Cheering when she beats personal records, teasing her on off days. Today was fairly average. She rattles off the list—five squirrels, three doves, a couple of rabbits in his snares, and several handfuls of herbs, for her mother and Prim to make their poultices.

Gale's teeth glint in the moonlight, this time from a yawn. "See? You hardly need me out there."

She doesn't tell him that she still struggles to set some of his more complicated snares, that she can't easily throw her own stones to startle the birds, not if she wants to nock her arrow, too.

She also doesn't tell him about Bo.

They linger at her front gate so long that Lady and her latest kid, Tramp, amble over to investigate. She has to chide Tramp for trying to take a chomp out of her skirt. The fact that goats can eat anything has been a blessing through the lean years. The fact that the lean years are fading to memory is also a blessing.

It's late, and she might be imagining things, but Gale's hand seems to linger on her waist as she passes through the gate and he latches it behind her.

The chill she feels is not only from the wind.


	4. Chapter 4

"Incoming!" Posy exclaims, tumbling through the door in advance of her siblings.

The Everdeen and Hawthorn clans are getting so big, it's hard for them to squeeze into the Everdeen house. But squeeze they do, just like they've done for the last seventeen years. Seventeen, it seems impossible, but Prim is now almost an adult. When Katniss looks at her, she still sees that little girl in pigtail braids who couldn't quite keep her shirt tucked. Now, Prim has traded the braids in favor of a twistup, just like their mother. Katniss feels ancient.

This year, they have a lot to celebrate. One more year of safety for their children, most of whom are now old enough for the Reaping. And Prim and Rory just celebrated their seventeenth birthdays, five days apart. Katniss has saved up for months, just enough money to buy seventeen of the little cakes they sell at the new bakery. Cupcakes, the Baker calls them, and they're all the rage in town these days.

Rory is almost as tall as Gale ("Taller," he crows, standing on his toes), and he no longer turns into a beet when his brothers tease him about Prim. They've been a thing for years, persisting despite the occasional lover's spat over some imagined slight. It's understood that they're waiting until they're eighteen, until they can safely marry.

Slowly, everyone settles in to the familiar routine, doing their part to get the feast on the table. Katniss even risked some fresh meat for the occasion, which she's been roasting over a low fire since yesterday.

Everyone pulls up whatever's handy—chair, stool, bucket—and then Gale waits, mock-stern, until the teenagers settle, grabbing hands like a daisy chain, despite some mumbles of them being "too old for this." Katniss feels Gale's hand firm and warm in hers, his nails lined with black, despite their scrubbing when he came in. Chin tucked, he rumbles the Miner's prayer, as he's done for years, like his father before him.

"Amen," Posy blurts, and they tuck in, a cacophony of plates and knives and "Pass the cheese," to which Prim preens.

From where he presides at the head of the table, Gale is unusually quiet. Usually, he takes his responsibility as eldest sibling seriously, giving Rory a hard time about his latest sporting match and teasing Posy about her schoolgirl crush, which changes weekly. "Just tired," he says when Katniss cocks an eyebrow at him.

As the meal winds down, plates empty and bellies nearly full, Katniss stands to unearth the cupcakes from where they're hidden behind a cupboard. She's halfway there when a sound turns her back. It's Rory, banging his knife against a tin cup. Slowly, the buzz of conversation dies.

Katniss notices details for the first time. His hair is slicked back. He's wearing his nice shoes.

"Everyone, I have something to say." His face is oddly serious, tone formal. Katniss has never seen him so pale, as though he's sick. "Rather, a question for Miss Primrose Everdeen here."

Prim's head swivels on her slender neck, eyes wide. Katniss' chest grows tight.

"Will you do me the extraordinary honor of being my betrothed?" Rory asks, so very solemn and focused.

"Yes, oh yes," Prim says.

The mothers descend, and there are tears and hugs and well wishes. When it's her turn, Katniss holds on to Prim so tight.

"I'm happy for you," she whispers into her sister's neck. Prim's eyes shine when she pulls back.

Later, they gather in the sitting room, crammed on every surface, savoring every crumb of the cupcakes, which Katniss had presented to a chorus of delight, a perfect ending to a perfect evening. They're wedged five to the couch, Katniss balancing on an edge, practically sitting on Gale's lap. His arm steadies her.

Prim and Rory sit front and center, perched in the two good kitchen chairs like thrones. All eyes are on them, sitting straight and proud and suddenly so grown up. Hazelle and Mother pepper them with increasingly specific questions about the wedding—who and what and where—as though they've been thinking about these sorts of details for years. Perhaps they have.

…no place big enough in the Seam…

…the youngest Bonnet girl last year…

The words ebb and flow around Katniss, a lone rock in a burbling stream. She distracts herself by the sugar melting on her tongue, bite by tiny bite, feels it swell in her blood.

Then, so softly that at first she thinks she's imagining it, she feels something stroking below the edge of her skirt, where it meets her bare leg, where no one can see. For a long moment, Katniss stills, Gale's finger a feather against her suddenly hot skin. She savors her last bite of cupcake, licks the icing from her lips, and then stands to deposit her plate in the sink, where they pile like leaves. From across the room, she can still feel Gale. Still feel his hand on her thigh. Still feel his eyes. Watching her.

So instead of returning to her perch, where things are starting to get confusing, she skirts the room toward the back screen door. Slips outside, nearly unnoticed, to get some air. Stands holding herself in, surveying their patch of dirt, as the breeze cools her cheeks.

In a few minutes, someone joins her, laughter leaking through the screen as it swings open. She knows without looking that it's Gale. Knows by his height, his smell, the quiet way he settles by her side, as though he's always been there. He keeps his distance, but she can feel his body heat, the way he shelters her from the wind.

Lady and Tramp nudge her, snuffling at her hands for crumbs of sweet.

"They're too young," she tells the night.

Gale says nothing at all.

* * *

><p>Prim's engagement opens a dam. Before, no one spoke to Katniss about getting married. Oh, Mother has dropped hints here and there, ever since her final Reaping. Ever since she was safe. That's the way of it. Didn't get murdered this year? Great, you can get married now.<p>

Now, it's all she can hear, in the interstices of Mother's conversations with Prim. They chatter away about dates and venues and where she and Rory will live. Now there are glances and there are darting eyes and there's a tone in Mother's voice sometimes when she says Katniss.

Like today, as Mother and Prim are catching up on the latest.

"He's already applied for housing," Prim says. Then she looks at Katniss. Females can get assigned a new living space only if they're paired. Males, on the other hand, can live out their lives as comfortable bachelors if they so choose. Of course, most of them don't choose. With one notable exception, a solitary house on the fringes of the District.

So, unless she decides otherwise, Katniss is stuck in this house with Mother. She can't picture it, a house without Prim, sleeping alone in their bed. It will be like living in the dark.

Katniss turns away from them, this little cabal, and looks out their warped window.

* * *

><p>Even Madge provides no refuge. Katniss sees her childhood friend only infrequently, usually when strawberries are in season or when she has a plump rabbit. They had eaten lunch together in school, sure, but Madge has two children now and no time. They have little in common. When she'd married a cobbler, instead of someone from the string of suitable suitors provided by her mother (all of whom had the potential to be the next Mayor), it had been quite the scandal. Katniss wasn't surprised, though, knowing Madge.<p>

But Katniss is surprised when, instead of merely accepting her sack of berries with a smile and returning with boots that her husband has mended in trade, Madge ushers her into the kitchen and clears a spot at the table. She's in the middle of spoon-feeding her little girl.

After some pleasantries about the weather, which is code for how the forest was today, Madge gets down to business. "I hear that Prim and Rory are engaged."

Katniss' mood sours.

"That's right."

"So?" Madge prompts.

"So…they're a little young?"

"Fiddle. They have another year, yes? I suppose they're going to wait until after?"

Katniss nods. Everyone does. There's a flurry of weddings in the weeks and months after Reaping day.

"So," Madge hints again. "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Oh, Katniss." Madge laughs. "I feel like you're being deliberately obtuse. When someone told us that an Everdeen was getting married, we all thought it was you."

Katniss grows uncomfortable at the thought of there being an us, a gaggle of young women and mothers sitting around discussing which of their peers haven't paired off yet. She sees them sometimes, strolling through the town, a baby on each arm. Strange that Madge, who hadn't cared much for her peers when in school, is now part of that crowd.

"Well, I'm not."

"Are you really going to let Prim get married before you?"

She doesn't even have to think. "Yes."

Madge cocks her head, studying her closely. "I always thought…"

"What?"

"You and Gale."

Katniss turns away, looks out the window. "Gale knows how it is."

A younger Madge, the one she grew up with, wouldn't have pushed. But the older Madge has a self-confidence that comes from having two healthy children and a doting husband.

"And how is that, Katniss?"

She wants to tell Madge that she refuses to give into this system in which people pair off and breed for the sole purpose of the Capitol's entertainment. But you don't speak of it. Not with Madge sitting here, feeding her own little one, who's currently upending the contents of her spoon all over her lap.

"Gale knows that I'm not ready." It's a hedge, a way to placate those who ask without full-on denial.

Madge knows when she's hit a wall. She sighs. "I just want you to be happy."

Happy, Katniss thinks. Yes, happy little rabbits in a trap, gnawing off their own feet. Year after year of their children, lambs to the slaughter. But she can't say this.

You don't speak of it, that's the way of it.

Their conversation dries up after that, nothing more to say. Soon Katniss bids her friend farewell, citing a few other folks she promised to drop by.

* * *

><p>Katniss takes to spending more time in the woods and at the Hob, reluctant to go home. At the Hob, surrounded by warmth and laughter, she can almost forget that the winds are a'changing, that her life will never be the same. Almost, if not for the fact that even Gale is different. She can't put her finger on it, but it becomes increasingly clear from the way he seems distracted, slower to smile, looks at her with something new in his eyes.<p>

Like tonight, he's subdued, refusing to take the bait even when Dob ribs him about a mistake he'd made earlier in the day.

"I've never seen Hawthorne so much as slip on some loose shale," Dob is saying. "But today, he upends an entire wheelbarrow full. All over Bark's shoes."

Normally, Gale would have given it right back, something like "At least I had an entire wheelbarrow full." But tonight he just smiles, like an afterthought, rolling his glass between his hands.

Even after the conversation wends in other directions, flowing and ebbing around them, Katniss watches Gale. She's never seen him like this, doesn't know how to interpret his stiff limbs, usually all grace. He meets her gaze, then looks away, as though he hasn't seen the question in her eyes. But she knows better. He's always been able to read her. He knows what she's asking. He's just avoiding.

The thought of Gale pulling away, of him leaving her like Prim, is almost unbearable. Her beer is stale, her smile flat. She half-heartedly follows the conversations on either side of her, but she's stuck in the middle, unable to fully engage in either. Across from her, Gale is the same, eerily quiet and cut off. He won't look at her again.

Finally finally finally, Gale stands and stretches, though his beer (and hers) is only half empty. She's almost surprised when he steps around to her side of the table.

"Ready to go?" he says from over her shoulder, as though it's any other night.

"Yes," she says, and she notices that Thom looks over. He sometimes joins them on the trek back to the Seam, as he lives several houses down from the Everdeens. But tonight, Thom just sits back, something knowing in his glance. Katniss feels like she's on the wrong side of a secret.

She follows Gale's broad back toward the south exit, the one he takes when they're not in a hurry to get her home.

The air is dry and heavy, like any other night.

For a long while, they just walk.

"You're quiet."

"Yeah, I'm—"

"Tired?" she supplies, this pat answer he's been giving her for weeks. "You've been tired a lot lately."

He's quiet again for a long time. Then, "I've been thinking."

"Bad idea," she deadpans. Gale laughs, but it's not his normal laugh.

"Aren't you going to ask me what I've been thinking about?"

She parrots, "Gale, what've you been thinking about?"

On any other night, he would have tweaked her braid for being snotty. Maybe gone for her third rib, where she's absolutely not ticklish. But on this night, he doesn't do any of these things, these normal Gale things. Instead, he takes a breath, then stops, staring out at trees silhouetted by the fading twilight.

Then he says, "Us."

A single word, but it's like a firebomb in her chest. Because she realizes what this is. Why Gale has been so quiet, ever since Rory. Thom might have been in on the secret. And, thinking back, Madge, too. All those pointed questions about Gale. Now here they are, on an evening stroll, safe from prying eyes. Gale knows her too well to have this conversation in front of an audience. Or perhaps he's unsure of how this will go, no witnesses.

She tries to diffuse it, this bomb. "Oh, not you, too. Don't tell me that we should up and get married, just because our kid siblings are."

"I'm not saying that. I just want to have a conversation."

She kicks a nearby pebble, head down. "We've talked about this."

"We were kids."

"We were never kids, Gale. Besides, nothing's changed." Life goes on, year after unending year.

He tries a different tack. "It's simple math. The more kids we have in the District, the less chance it will be that one of ours gets Reaped."

"Or," she counters quickly, "if we stop having kids, there will be no one for the Capitol to Reap." They've had this argument before.

He shakes his head. "If we stop having kids, the Capitol will find a way to make us. They'll pair us up and give us quotas, just like they have with the coal. They'll give more food to those who have kids."

"No matter how you look at it, kids still get Reaped. End of story."

"It doesn't have to be."

"What?"

"The end of the story. What if there were no Reaping?" His tone is strangely serious, as if this is even remotely a possibility.

"Gale…" she's dismissive, not willing to engage in one of his fantasies, not willing to string out this conversation. You never know who might be listening, even all the way out here, under the stars. He hasn't talked about this topic in so long, she'd thought he'd finally accepted their life. She thought he'd finally accepted that there was absolutely nothing they could ever do about it.

But maybe he didn't stop talking about the Capitol. Maybe he just stopped talking about the Capitol to her.

"No, I'm serious," he presses on, eyes boring into hers. "What if there were no Reaping?"

She feels cornered, trapped, as though this is going to a place she can't follow. "I don't know. I've never thought about it." She thinks about it now. Thinks about Father's death and how Mother reacted to it. Thinks about how Prim, already so thin, would likely have died because Mother couldn't deal. "The Reaping isn't the only thing wrong with this world."

He understands the black in her tone, shakes his head. "Our kids wouldn't have to go through the same things we went through."

He said our.

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying," he says, "that I want to have kids. With you, Katniss."

He can't be saying this. Not here, not now. They've talked about this.

He's saying, "I want you to be my wife. I've wanted that ever since I came across you that day in the woods, and you wouldn't take any of my shit. I'm saying that I love you."

She shakes her head, trying to dislodge the confusion that swarms like mosquitos. She doesn't know how to explain. Maybe she just needs more time. This is all happening so fast. First Rory, and now this. She feels the way the electric fence had felt, the one and only time she'd touched it live.

"Break bread with me, Katniss."

It's not even a question. It's a fact. It's a certainty, everything in their lives pointing to this. No one in District 12 would be foolish enough to say no to an offer from Gale. He's the best of them. So she can't say no. She can't.

She loves Gale. Of course she does. She is Gale's, and he is hers. Anything else is unthinkable.

Gale's watching her closely, as if her minute expressions are a map to her thoughts. He hurries on. "We don't even have to get married. We don't have to have kids. I just want to be with you. I want whatever piece of you I can get. I can apply for my own place now. I'm old enough, with a vocation. Our house is too crowded anyway, they'll understand that…" She's never heard Gale babble before. He's obviously thought about this a lot. For years, by the sound of it.

The more he talks, the more he shares with her his plans, his dreams, the more sure she is that she can never fit into them in the way that he wants her to. It all feels…wrong, somehow, like the world is spinning on without her, leaving her rooted.

Inexplicably, she thinks of a boy, standing at the edge of a porch, flour on his apron, staring at her through the rain. A boy, staring at her over her father's grave. Then still but a boy, standing in a clearing of corpses, blood dripping from the machete in his hand. Staring at her through a camera.

"Let's move in together," Gale is saying. "Somewhere central, between your house and mine. I heard the Blooms are looking to barter for a larger place, given their five kids and the sixth on the way…"

There's a rope around her chest, drawing tight, inch by inch. Doesn't Gale understand? She doesn't want any of this. Doesn't want things to change. Wants to spend weekends with him in the forest, in the Hob.

"Catnip," Gale says, a final plea, his words run dry. He doesn't have anything more to say. He's used himself up, poured his soul out into her waiting hands, like water from a clear spring. And here she stands, mute and cold as rock. "Say something."

Her eyes snap to his, from where she's been gazing out into the gloom, at the forest beyond. Knows that she's about to shatter something fragile. Something that can't ever be replaced.

"Gale," she says weakly, and her voice fractures. It's just his name. Only a name, but it's also an answer. Gale hears it, but he won't let her off that easily.

"Katniss." His eyes plead. He's going to make her say it.

"I can't," she says at last.

"Why not?" he challenges, eyes desperate.

"Because I don't want to get married. I don't want to have kids."

Something closes in Gale's face. Something so familiar and precious that she chills in fear of never seeing it again.

"So that's it, then," he says at last. Measured, controlled, the way he talks to the Peacekeepers, something dark and unbridled beneath. He angles sharply away from her, and it's like a door closing in her face. He's right there, so close that she could reach out and touch him, but he's further away than he's ever been.

"Gale," she says again, and it's enough.

Together, yet worlds apart, they stand and peer in the direction of the forest, lost to them in the gloom. After an interminable silence, Gale merely turns and walks them back toward home.

The trek is miserable, a far cry from their usual camaraderie. Everything is wrong. Everything is broken. Gale doesn't even walk her all the way to her gate, stopping as soon as they round the corner to her street.

"I'll wait," he says quietly, to her feet.

And he does. He waits until she's through her gate. Until she's standing on the porch. Like he always has. Even now.

Then he's gone.

* * *

><p>Somehow, she makes it inside. Somehow, she tells Mother and Prim about her day, at least the parts that don't matter. Somehow, she waits until Prim's asleep. Then Katniss curls into herself and weeps silently into her pillow.<p> 


	5. Chapter 5

Dawn bathes the trees in gold, reaching to paint the sky. The birds have been gossiping for a good two hours already, and Katniss' left leg is going numb. She's given up precious daylight as it is, crouched on their rock. Another Sunday, but Gale hasn't come. Two weeks and he hasn't made it. Two weeks since he proposed.

She gives it five more minutes, then flows down from the rock and slinks off into the forest, not looking back. She tells herself that Gale can track her steps, if he wants to. And he knows where his snares are, knows better than she does.

She takes extra time checking the lines. Almost all of them have an animal in them. Her mood sours further when several of the creatures writhe weakly at her approach. Gale's snares are designed to kill. When they don't, when she doesn't set them tightly enough, the animals are mangled, likely in horrible pain. She makes quick work of them with her knife, taking out her frustration on Gale's increasing unreliableness.

Maybe this is how it will be.

He proposed, she said no. She can't expect him to just show up in the woods, as though nothing's changed. She can't expect him to be her hunting partner forever, the only part of her she's willing to share.

So it is that Katniss is out hunting, alone, on a Sunday morning, several miles out when it happens. The day is bright and lazy, and maybe it was the sun and the heat that make her complacent. Or maybe it's that she's too distracted by thoughts of Gale, by the look on his face when she told him, I can't.

She steps around an ancient, wide tree, one that she couldn't have reached around with her arms, to find a single wild hog rooting in the damp earth only a few paces away. She goes very still, cursing herself.

When she and Gale had previously seen wild hog, the animals always traveled in packs and weren't exactly quiet. They'd had no difficulty eluding them, although one time they did have to shimmy up the nearest tree and wait for several hours until the hogs got bored, drifting away.

This time, it's all wrong, the nearest tree too wide for purchase, the hog already raising its head, on alert. Her stomach sinks when she sees the treasure trove of grubs and mushrooms it was feasting on, having upended a fallen branch. From its defensive stance, legs stiff, she can see it's not interested in sharing, not one bit.

Without warning, not even a single spurt of breath, it charges.

She's too close; her first arrow shoots clean through its ear, infuriating it further. It comes on, bearing toward her like a coal train, trumpeting its rage. She throws herself to the left, trying to put the tree between them.

And she almost does it, too, until one of its tusks catches the inside of her left leg, snagging on her pants and ripping into the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh. She screams, but the sound just infuriates the beast further. It whirls, hooves clambering in the leaves, and streaks directly toward her again. She's standing on her good leg, already reaching for another arrow.

For years, Gale has tested her, tossing a rock into bushes to see if she can notch an arrow quickly enough to fell one of the small birds he startles. Early on, she would miss. In later years, not so much. So she's fast, but she's not this fast. The hog is also fast, too fast, and too close.

So instead of notching the arrow, Katniss makes a split-second decision, one that might cost her life. She doesn't raise her bow, doesn't try to notch the arrow. Instead, she holds it tightly in her fist, willing herself to stand perfectly still. Then, in the last second before the hog is again in range with its tusks (it's so close she can see the whites of its eyes, smell the musk of its breath), she dives to the other side, in the direction of her good leg, and thrusts the arrow upward.

An inch to the left or the right, and her thrust would have caught its jawbone, and he would have caught her, and that would have been that.

But somehow her arrow doesn't go to the left or right, it drives true, piercing into the beast's jugular and through its brain. Warmth spurts down her hand and arm and splatters into her eyes, blinding her. The hog grunts one last time, as if in surprise, and collapses—all fifty pounds of it—directly onto her injured leg, pinning her in place.

For a moment, she lies still and tries to breathe through the choking blood.

Somehow, she manages to extricate herself from under the carcass. She bites down on a scream so hard that she tastes blood. Somehow, she manages to drag herself upright, using the nearby tree as support. When she does, black spots encroach dangerously on her vision, and it's all she can do to stand still and just breathe.

If the situation had been serious before, it's critical now.

Wild hogs travel in packs. It's only a matter of time until his companions come snuffling to find what's become of him, drawn by the scent of blood. She needs to be long gone when they do. But with her leg, there's no way she can climb a tree this time, much less outlast them before they get bored and move on. The scent of blood on the air will enrage them, like poking an anthill with sticks.

Katniss resolutely doesn't look down her leg. It doesn't even feel like a leg anymore, more like she walks on flames. Her pant and boot are drenched and sticky. She's never been great with injuries, not like her mother and sister, so she thinks it's probably best to ignore it for now, lest the sight of her mangled flesh crumple her rapidly waning resolve.

Somehow, she limps the excruciating mile back to the fence. The longest mile of her life. Somehow, she bends over to slat herself through the fence. Somehow, she doesn't pass out when her bad leg snags again on barbed wire, although she lands heavily on the ground, just inside the fence.

As she lies in the dirt, already oozing with her blood, she knows that she's not going to make it. She and Gale always leave for the forest in a remote area of the fence, far away from the nearest Seam residence. Nothing to implicate anyone else should they ever get caught.

When she thinks about the trek back to Mother, she feels faint. She won't make it, not in this condition. But there is one place she can go. She doesn't want to, but she has no choice.

She almost doesn't make it.

In her near-delirium, the Victor's houses are skulls with vacant eyes.

By the time she falls to the porch at the end of the row, she's only half-conscious. She can't even reach for the doorbell. The wood is warm beneath her cheek. Before everything goes black, she smiles. She's just deposited herself on his doorstep, like she would a squirrel.

Maybe he'd skin and roast her, too.


	6. Chapter 6

She's in a forest.

At first, she thinks it's her forest, familiar and bright. But as she walks, the terrain morphs, shadows shift, darkness descends. Unlike her forest, which bursts with life, this forest bristles with death, potential weapons at every turn. Branches to gouge the soft flesh of eyeballs and stomachs. Puddles of water just deep enough to hold someone in until they drown. Sinkholes to twist ankles, saplings to whip, thorns to rend, tusks and beaks and teeth.

She recognizes it now—the arena. His arena.

Katniss climbs a scarred tree, bark bloodying her hands, and surveys the wilderness for movement. The trees drip snakes. Monkeys with oversized fangs shiver distant branches. And there—there is what she's looking for, something sharp and bright that glints between the trees. An unnatural silver sliver, bared brazenly in a hand, hacking this way and that, through shrubs that claw and cling. Coming unerringly toward her.

She's being hunted.

He knows she's here.

The thought paralyzes her, clinging to a branch, a deer in the glowing eyes of a jungle cat. She can only watch, can only clench, as the weapon hacks its way closer. Closer and closer, until the one who wields it stands at the base of her tree, inspecting the mud for tracks.

She doesn't move, doesn't breathe. Maybe, if she's so quiet and so very still, he'll go away. He turns this way and that, following the muddled map of her feet, until the prints disappear, the moment she stepped up into the tree.

Then he looks up, right at her.

"Come down," he says. "I'm not going to hurt you."

She knows better. He's said this before. To all the others.

It's okay, she thinks wildly. His weapon can't reach. And he's too heavy to climb. He seems to realize this as well, just stares and stares, face upturned and innocent. She tells herself that she can last, that he'll fall asleep first.

But then.

Then he picks up a rock.

She tries to scream, tries to scrabble, but she can't.

She can only fall.

* * *

><p>Katniss' eyes fly open, but she can't see. The dream presses, like a rag stuffed in her mouth. Gasping for breath, she realizes it's not a rag. Just her tongue, thick and swollen.<p>

She's not in a forest.

She's in a room.

Something is wrong, from the inky black expanse to the fact that she's half-naked. On instinct, she reaches for Prim but instead comes up with a fistful of cool, impossibly slinky fabric. Fear curls in her gut. A thought seeps into the haze: He's taken her.

She jerks up and listens, trying frantically to understand where she is. The moon through an open window is murky, as though she's looking up at it from the bottom of her Father's lake. Her hands feel five sizes too big. Distantly, she understands she has a fever.

Then, from somewhere below, she hears a sickening sound—a hiss of metal, like when the men grind their pickaxes against the wheel. Or when Gale sharpens his knife around their campfire in the woods.

Sliding from the bed, she fumbles for her pants, which she can just make out draped neatly over a chair. Light oozes from the crack of a nearby door. She follows its source down a short hallway of closed doors, to the top of a staircase.

She's burning up but she's desperately cold, one arm cradling herself as she takes the first step, the other gripping and slipping on the railing. As she descends, she squints against a light that blinds. A lone bulb showcases a dark figure standing over the kitchen table. She would know his silhouette anywhere, branded into her corneas. He's working intently over something before him. The shadows cavort and claw.

She clutches at the bannister, knees suddenly weak. She must make some sound, for the dark figure turns. It's the Victor, hair haloed golden by the light of the bulb, casting his face in shadow. He seems to tower over her.

For a moment, she stares at the dark haze where his face should be. Then the Victor's head turns left. In his hand he holds a knife with wicked prongs, like the one the butcher uses to disembowel a goat. And this knife, it's covered in something dark and sticky. Cold begins to creep through her belly. Sweat drips into her eyes.

"What are you doing?" Katniss demands, trying to peer past the hand the Victor is holding up.

"Wait," he says, alarm in his voice. She ignores him, stepping closer so she can see past, to what's beyond. There, flayed before the Victor on his dining table, are the carcasses of her kills from earlier. Rabbits, squirrels, they've all been butchered, pelts spattered with blood and gore. Internal organs lined up neatly on the table in descending order of size.

Irrationally, she thinks—He's killed them. He's killed them all.

She screams, primal, and launches herself at the Victor, this person who has murdered these innocent little animals. As he turns, she sees that his crisp white apron (the kind his father used to wear) is smeared in blood. They grapple for the knife, but everything is too slick slick slick until the Victor grunts and releases and the weapon goes skittering away.

Blood is on her hands on her face in her nostrils in her very soul. He has her now, in a wrestling grip from behind, wrenching her arms useless, breath heavy on her neck.

He says a single word—her name–and she lets her limbs go wild, scratching and kicking, then butting her head backwards, rewarded by a grunt and her freedom. She crumples to the kitchen floor, scrabbling toward the door to the porch. But before she can reach the handle, his hand is on her ankle, and she shrieks as he yanks on her injured leg, flesh tearing and fire searing.

She twists around and screams again at his face, too close, rivulets of blood. Blood, blood, everywhere.

"Stop," he says, easily intercepting a kick. She's weak now, a rabbit caught in a snare. "I'm not going to hurt you," he says. The words from her dream.

She screams and screams and screams.

No one around to hear.

Somehow, he gets her up the stairs. Somehow, he manhandles her back into his room, despite how she clutches at the doorframe, and into his bed. She thrashes weakly as he pinions her with his weight, as he forces first one arm and then the other up and away. When he retreats, her arms and legs are bound to the posts, flayed before him.

He's gone for a moment, just a moment, and then he's back with something in his hand. Something long and sharp. Something that stings like a tracker jacker as he pricks her with it.

* * *

><p>Later, much later, she swims back to consciousness. There's a dark figure slumped in a nearby chair. As she stirs, his head turns to look at her.<p>

"What did you give me?" she asks through blurry lashes, her consonants too soft, slurred.

"Morphling." His voice is low, soft.

The word curdles her insides. Everyone knows of morphling, the way it reaches into you and lights up your blood, until you can't live without it. Everyone knows about District 6, about the walking skeletons.

"No more," she says, working her thick tongue, but it's already lulling her back under again.

* * *

><p>When she wakes again, really wakes, the insides of her eyelids are bathed in orange. She cracks one and cringes because everything is too bright. Her head is a boulder. But her thoughts are clear. For the first time in—how long?—her thoughts are her own. The sun is swollen and low in the sky, harbinger of another night. She's slept for days.<p>

Sitting up is hard. Her body rebels from even this simple movement, until she leans over the side of the bed and heaves into a nearby bucket, a sickly gruel. Then she sits and breathes, stiff and miserable, afraid her hacking will summon the Victor from wherever he's gone. But he doesn't come and he doesn't come, and she realizes that her arms and legs are free, nothing keeping her here. No evidence of the ties that previously bound her to the bed. With experimental weight on her bad leg, she finds that she can stand, that she can take shuffling steps forward.

There, a door leads to an expansive bathroom, the size of her bedroom at home. A claw-foot tub squats in the corner, and two sinks are set into smooth. Eagerly, she surges forward to a faucet, with its running water. She cranes her head and laps at the stream, until her throat is no longer parched. Then she splashes her face and inspects herself in the mirror. She's pale and gray, but seems otherwise unharmed.

A disturbing thought—would she know if she'd been harmed?

She forces herself to release her grip on the marble, then turns back toward the main door. It's the same hallway, the same staircase. The same stairs that descend into a realm of madness. The same dining table, not a chair out of place. At the head of the table sits a plate of food and a glass of milk. But no evidence anywhere of blood or entrails. No knives. The kitchen is sterile, empty. Sun streams cheerily in through windows fringed with clean white curtains.

The milk is still frosty cool, the food untouched. Meant for her, perhaps. She leaves it where it is. Her eyes land on a red phone nestled on the wall. But who would she call? The Mayor? The Peacekeepers? There are precious few phones in the district, and she doesn't know any of the numbers. She picks up the receiver anyway.

Then she hears a sound and startles, slamming the phone back. Whirling for the source, she sees that a gleaming oven is lit up. Bright numbers count down a time: 2:59…58…57. Her mind flashes to the Games, that final countdown before the first cannon sounds. Peering through the frosted glass, she sees two fat loaves of bread, already a crisp gold.

She has three minutes. Three minutes until the alarm sounds, the bread is ready, and the Victor emerges from wherever it is he's gone. In a few seconds, she's slipped from the kitchen door (unlocked) and down the porch.

Doggedly, she limps as quickly as she dares, fearing every moment for someone to grab her from behind, until she's past these houses of horrors, through the gate, creaking in the wind, and back in the world where she belongs.

* * *

><p>Adrenaline gives out when she's only halfway to the Seam. She grits her teeth and focuses on moving forward. Step, drag. Step, drag.<p>

* * *

><p>She comes home to bedlam, her arrival exploding the cadre of bodies within. So many people, so many lights, a chorus of "Katniss!" when she staggers to the screen door, shaky and sweaty. Mother cries out and rushes to prop her up and escort her inside. So many hands, helping her to the couch. Rory takes off, an arrow, as soon as she's safely seated.<p>

"To find Gale," Hazelle says from her right elbow. Turns out, he's been out in the forest looking for her, taking turns with Rory. Of course, they wouldn't have reported this to the Peacekeepers. They'd try to find her on their own.

"We were so worried," Prim chides, extending a plate of food. Katniss has stayed out in the forest overnight before, sure, but only on those rare occasions when the short in the fence suddenly kicks in, and she's trapped on the other side. And every other time, she'd had Gale. This time, she'd been gone two nights, the fence was still off, and no one had heard from her. Not Gale, not anybody.

She thinks again of the red phone, and how there was no one she could call.

In between bites of flatbread, Katniss tells them about the wild boar. But just as she's gotten to the part where she speared it with her arrow, Rory returns, Gale on his heels. He's gray with fatigue, lined with worry, but he sparks to life when he sees her safely ensconced on the couch.

"Catnip," he says, forgetting himself, a name he calls her only in their forest. She half-stands as he approaches, balancing on her good leg. His hug is stiff and desperate, here with their audience. Hazelle and Mother watch the exchange intently.

Katniss starts her story anew—how she'd surprised the boar, how she'd managed to slow it down but not stop it, how it gouged her leg.

"Can we see?" Rory implores eagerly, so young still (too young), but Katniss downplays it as just a graze.

Then comes the part where she should tell them about the Victor. How she'd gone to him in desperation, as so many other girls from the Seam had done through the years. But sitting here with everyone's eyes on her, especially Gale's, she knows she can't tell them this. Not with Gale looking at her like that, mouth tight. And besides, she doesn't know what parts of that story are true.

Instead, she tells them about how she made it to the hunting shack on the lake, where she bandaged herself up—"You remember that old gauze we stole, Gale?"—and rested until her leg was strong enough to make it back.

Story told, everyone lets out the collective breath they'd been holding, the panic of the past three days seeping away into the encroaching night. As the Hawthornes gather up to leave, Gale lingers while Mother pats her up to sit on the kitchen table so she can properly inspect the wound.

With a glance at Gale, Mother says, "Prim, come help me with the medicines," and they retreat.

Gale stares at her from where he's leaning against a cabinet, arms across his chest. His eyes haven't left her since he got here.

"I thought…" But he can't finish. She knows what he thought, the agony he must have felt, trapped down in the mines for interminable hours while she was lying out there somewhere, presumably injured. Or worse.

"It's just a scratch," she repeats. He eyes the bulge under her pant leg, which is too much for a mere scratch. "Really. It looks a lot worse than it is."

He just shakes his head. "You shouldn't have—"

"Don't," she warns. He can't tell her that she shouldn't hunt alone. They both know why she was alone. They both know that she'll hunt alone again. Such is their life now. "I was careless, after..." Her turn to trail off. "It won't happen again."

He's looking at her, something in his face. "Funny thing. I checked the hunting cabin."

"When?" she asks, sure and steady.

"Couple of hours ago."

She doesn't even blink. "Guess we missed each other." It's plausible, they each move so silently through the forest. There are several animal trails back from the cabin, no guarantee that they'd choose the same one. And she'd stopped off at the cabin to check the fishing lines before she'd chanced across the boar, so there's some visual evidence of a recent visit, albeit not as lengthy a one as she claims.

"Gale," Mother says mildly, returning with an armful of supplies, "she needs to rest. And so do you. Go home. Sleep."

He recognizes Healer's orders when he hears them. "See you, Katniss." It's a goodbye and a promise and a threat.

When he's gone, melting into the night, Mother and Prim set to inspecting her wound. When Prim peels back the bandage to reveal the length and depth of the so-called scratch, she hisses with empathy. Katniss forces herself to look, then wishes she hadn't. Mother's lips purse into a thin line when she sees the small, even stitches and the shiny-pink of new skin. But all she says is, "Looks like it's healing up nicely."

* * *

><p>Only later, when she's lying safe in her own bed, Prim a solid presence against her back, their room a womb, does Katniss allow herself to think. To feel. She's slept for three days; she doesn't think she can ever sleep again. Instead, her mind replays her foggy memory of the last three days, like a particularly brutal scene from the Games.<p>

That moment, Caesar would say, where the Tribute becomes the Victor. The moment from her dream, her horrible dream. The dream that wasn't quite a dream.

She not sure what's real—the blood, the tussle, the restraints—but the morphling rings true. Mother and Prim have told her enough about morphling for her to understand that it likely contributed to her memory-dream and to her perception of that hellish kitchen. The Victor was likely just skinning her game, inexpertly, understanding that it would spoil if he didn't.

But why did she lie to everyone? Perhaps because she was uncertain what Gale would do if he knew the truth. Bo and crew aren't the only ones capable of a lynch mob. Or perhaps it's because the Victor hadn't told the truth, either. Three days, and him a phone right there. He could have (should have) reported her to the Peacekeepers. Or at least somehow gotten word to her family. Instead, he'd protected her privacy, generous with his food and his bed and even his hands.

Those small, delicate stitches.

How can those same hands have destroyed so much?

She doesn't know, can't understand.

Real or not real?

She falls asleep at last to Prim's gentle breaths.


	7. Chapter 7

The braid lies hot and heavy, a line of sweat down her back, until Katniss swats it over a shoulder. She sits in her lean-to in the Seam square, the flies her only company. Square, they call it, like they do in the town, but here it's more a cancerous shape, swelling and shrinking depending on the seasons and what folks have to offer. A haphazard collection of booths held together by chicken wire and a prayer.

Her fingers wander to the puckered skin of her leg beneath her thin pants, as they're wont to do. The wound has faded to a scar, those three days in the Victor's Village becoming nothing but a whisper of a memory, a half-remembered dream.

Afterwards, she'd avoided the forest, her mood black at the thought of what the Victor might have done, finding her gone, who he might have told. Perhaps the Peacekeepers just needed proof, a cat waiting to pounce when they caught her in the act of breaching the fence. But days melted into weeks, and Mother's supplies started running so low a miner nearly bled out on her kitchen table.

So, nearly a month after the wild hog, Katniss finally chanced a trip out past the fence. She got winded quickly, and it took several practice shots before her creaky muscles cooperated. But she eventually got warm and nailed twelve squirrels, a personal best. Then she snuck back into the District with a heavy pack and not a peep from the Peacekeepers. The Victor must not have said anything after all.

She doesn't know what to make of this.

Katniss' attention catches on two raggedy boys racing around a nearby outhouse, skinny arms a'pumping, filthy feet slapping the dirt, faces skewed in concentration. Moments later, a young girl trails in their wake, braids and skirt flapping as she pushes to keep up with the boys.

The crew skids to an abrupt halt at a shop several paces away from hers. They make a big show of eyeballing some fat slabs of soap, something in which they clearly have no interest. Then, for the first time in weeks, the children step over to her establishment.

Katniss ignores them. It wouldn't do to encourage them, wouldn't do to smile. They fear her for a reason, and that's the way she likes it. She doesn't need the kids following her, particularly when she's anywhere near the fence. Although her face softens when the little girl peeks out from behind her brother.

"Where's Greasy Sae?" the eldest boy demands, still breathing heavy after his win. For this is Sae's shop, her collection of odds and ends.

"Not here," Katniss responds, holding his gaze.

"You her 'prentice?"

"Yes."

Greasy Sae had to retire from the mines after she developed the shakes, her hands too unsteady to keep quota. Afterward, Katniss heard some of the more crude Peacekeepers joking about "putting her down." Joking, she thought, but she couldn't be sure. She'd immediately filed a request for an apprenticeship with the old lady, an arrangement that would benefit them both. Preserve Sae's standing in society and prevent Katniss from working in the mines, her only other option.

Miraculously, the request was granted. Or perhaps not so miraculously, as even the Peacekeepers know about Sae's culinary creations. Her masterpieces are legendary in the Seam, and for some in the Town besides. Sae has an uncanny ability to cobble together the best dishes you've ever tasted out of limited and ever-changing ingredients. Hence her communal pot of stew down at the Hob, which she keeps simmering, adding new spices each day. All blended until they form something uniquely hers.

As a front to their more illicit activities, Sae and Katniss now run a trading and consignment post in the Seam square. You can pay in coin or you can pay in trade, it's up to you. Say you have extra scraps of leather (the cobbler's wife), mismatched lumber (the carpenter), or used baby clothes. You can bring these items to Greasy Sae's shop, and she'll get you a fair price. Thing is, she does it for the kids, too, but few folks ever want the stuff they bring in. So there are toys made of string and sticks, jars full of drying dandelions, and tins full of pretty (yet often worthless) rocks.

Galena, quartz, amber—Katniss knows all of their names. She and Prim have their own collection, lining their windowsill at home, dancing in the sun. Father had brought these treasures home with him, explained their names and their chemical composition to his enraptured daughters. In his hands, each fractured piece of rock was a remnant of a buried treasure.

So Katniss sits on her stool for half a day and mans the shop, until Sae comes in after lunch. Then she heads out for the rest of the day on "errands," as she and Sae refer to them, particularly when within range of listening ears. Some of the errands are legit, like taking profits to Sae's clients, so they don't have to come back to the store themselves. But Katniss spends a majority of that stolen time out in the forest, hunting game.

Sae then closes down shop, earlier than most ("An old lady needs her rest") and meets back up with Katniss at the Hob, where they have their more lucrative business, selling a variety of illicit items, including Sae's stew, leftover meat, pelts, entrails, teeth, and other items that they can't legally barter in the Seam square.

Today, though, Greasy Sae is late. Out of the corner of her eye, Katniss watches the three children step carefully through the shop, hands carefully tucked behind their backs. Eventually, they inch closer to Katniss, under pretense of digging through a bin of shinies—castoff materials from the mines that kids often scavenge from the slag heap.

"Oi," the eldest boy says, scrabbling around in the tumble until he's sure that a couple of the rocks he brought in last week aren't there. "Has Gorge been by?"

In response, Katniss holds out her palm, dotted with a line of three pennies. Gorge leaves these for the children when they find a stone he likes, which he then cuts into jewelry for Townie housewives. The kids scamper off, clutching a penny in each sweaty fist, eyes a'gleam at the thought of what they can buy this week. A sweet, perhaps, or one of those spinning tops!

Katniss gives it another hour. Greasy Sae doesn't come and doesn't come, which usually means she's under the weather. So Katniss packs up for the day, stowing the so-called treasures in their lockboxes and snapping them shut, keys dangling from a string around her neck. She'll swing by Sae's to check on her, and then she'll have a few hours of daylight left for hunting.

* * *

><p>Sae's simple granddaughter opens the door but just stands, staring, until a weak voice chastises her.<p>

"Come here, girl," Greasy Sae calls, and Katniss steps forward obediently, drawing back the curtain that shields Sae's pallet from the rest of the one-room house. The old woman reclines on a pelt of furs (Katniss' furs), her long hair fanned around her head, streaked gray and white. She looks regal. Not for the first time, Katniss thinks she must have been beautiful, back in her day. Despite her face criss-crossed with time and years of hard labor, her eyes are alert.

"Is everything all right?" Katniss asks.

"Oh yes, yes," Sae says, gesturing vaguely. "Just this durned leg of mine." She pats weakly at the furs next to her. "Have a seat, girl." Katniss doesn't remind her that she's been sitting all morning. Sae waves her to lean in.

"How's business?" The daily question, punctuated by a wink.

"As well as can be expected." Her usual wry response.

"That's good to hear," Sae says, overloud, as though she's speaking to an unseen audience. Which, given the curious gazes of the neighbors Katniss had passed, out on their porches, she very well might. Then, in a soft voice, Sae adds, "Girl, I need you to do something for me."

"Okay."

Sae gestures her closer. "I have an arrangement. Very private."

Katniss' thoughts go to the barracks behind the Hall of Justice, where the Peacekeepers spend their off hours.

"With who?" she asks, wary. She avoids going there, to where the Peacekeepers are, doesn't like the leers or the danger of trading right under Thread's nose, as Gale is sometimes wont to do. Greasy Sae, due to her age and unassuming profile, can tread where many can't.

"The Victor."

Heat flames from Katniss' belly, lapping under her skin. She's not sure if it's fear or…something else. Of all the people Sae could have said, this one is the worst. She would prefer to take stew to Thread himself.

Sae's eyes are sharp, missing nothing. If she refuses, Sae will want to know why. Or Sae might just up and make the trek herself, despite her condition. Likely the Victor is one of their most lucrative customers. Likely Sae charges him a premium for her services, given the risk.

"I'll do it." Katniss agrees, telling herself that she's not afraid. Sae will know where she is, if something happens. Not that it will matter, if something happens. Besides, he had his opportunity, those three days.

As she rises to leave, Sae calls after her, "Don't let those Glade brothers make off with any more of that galena."

Katniss snorts a laugh, which eases the weight on her chest. "I won't."

* * *

><p>Just leave the stew on the porch, Sae had instructed, so that's exactly what Katniss will do. Leave it and escape off into the forest. Still, she stands for a long while at the arch that leads into his domain. A long while before she can creak open the gate and walk silently, hunter-stepping, to his house at the dead end of the street.<p>

It's still and quiet, like the day an eternity ago when she came here to wait out the rain. She'll just set it down, nice and easy, and then make her escape off to the woods.

But she's taken only two steps when the front door opens, and there he stands. The Victor. Peeta Mellark, in all his glory.

Up close like this, he looks nothing like he had in the Games. He's older, of course, and his face has filled out, so that's part of it. But it's more—his face is like a tree in winter, years heaving stripped him down to bare bone, a far cry from the bright, lush evergreen it had been when they were children.

She's thought of this day for weeks, years. She has a thousand questions.

But then Peeta asks a question of his own.

"Where's Sae?" He's gruff, looking over her head, as though he'll find Sae standing nearby.

"Her leg is bothering her. She asked me to—"

"I deal only with Sae," he says, stepping back, conversation dismissed. "You should leave. Now."

Her anger rises in the face of yet another unfounded rejection. She'd felt stupid, letting Sae talk her into coming here again, telling herself that she owed him something, anything, because of that day so long ago when he'd saved her life. Because of her leg.

"I was just—"

"Are you deaf? I said go."

When she still doesn't move, too shocked that she's standing here and this boy, the same boy who braved a beating to toss her some bread, is saying these things. She'd thought perhaps the other night, with Bo, was a fluke. He was rattled, afraid of getting caught after curfew.

"Leave," he snarls. "Get out of here. Go!"

Then she's staring at a door, inches from her nose. The force of his slam shakes a nearby window. Inside, she hears glass breaking. Less than a minute, the time it takes to fracture something beyond repair.

She should go and never return.

Instead, she takes a step forward and wrenches the door back open. Peeta stands in the middle of a jumble of broken shards, likely a vase that was probably once perched on a skinny, silly table designed for a sole purpose. Beyond him is the dining table, pristine and bare as always.

"I told Sae I would deliver your stew," Katniss says, hefting the package at his head with all her strength. He dodges, and the bag splats against the wall, then the floor, mottled brown as its contents seep out. "There's your stew."

Peeta just stares at it, head bowed. She forces herself to remain steely calm as she turns her back on him and stalks from his house.

A slam punctuates her exit.

Katniss is nearly back through the arch when she glances over to see another figure cutting through the Village, slipping between the buildings. Even from this distance, she can tell it's a young Seam woman, about her age.

The woman looks up, and they stare at each other for a moment across an empty yard. Then the woman lifts her chin, eyes defiant, and sweeps away. Toward the Victor's house. Toward Peeta and his extra helping of stew.

Even as Katniss leaves this place, she thinks that something about Peeta's snarling face, his stance had seemed familiar. She's seen it before, on game caught in Gale's snares. An injured animal, lashing out against hands trying to help it.

Peeta had lashed out at her, wanting to hurt her. She thinks of the irrational rage in his eyes, after he saw who it was at his door. But beyond all that, there was something deeper.

* * *

><p>People say they saw the signs, even before. The way Peeta and his brothers were always wrestling (so violent). The way he would sweet-talk kisses out of girls and then never speak to them again (so deceitful). And of course, everyone knew about his mother. With a momma like that, they cluck, shaking their heads, he was bound to be unstable. Only a matter of time. Good thing the Capitol took him first, exposed him for what he really is, before he could hurt one of our own.<p>

Katniss has heard it all. When she hears his name, down in the Hob or picking Prim up from school or around town, she listens. Listens like she does in the forest, all frozen, betraying nothing, barely breathing.

Of course, they don't know what she knows. Sure, she saw him wrestling and tossing bags of flour and heard what Delly said about him kissing her (then again, it's Delly) and watched as his momma cuffed him for inadvertently burning two loaves of bread.

But she also remembers the way he'd hold the door for anyone at school and the way he'd always high-five anyone who made a goal, even on the other team. She remembers him turning around and giving one of those burnt loaves to a girl who would have starved to death otherwise.

At first, Katniss lived in fear that he would realize the debt she owed him. Or maybe ask her to do things for him, things that other girls from the Seam sometimes did. Or even that he'd suddenly want to be friends.

But he did none of those things.

When she started seeing him (really seeing him), she saw him everywhere. Before school, in a cluster of boys waiting for the doors to open. In the halls between classes, lugging his books in a flour bag over one shoulder. On the athletic field after school (a patch of uneven ground) that they'd painstakingly cleared of trees, leaving only a few miscellaneous stumps that, every now and again, someone would trip over, despite the flags they'd put up to mark the spot.

She and Prim started taking the long way home. Just because, she'd told Prim, but there was a reason. In a glance, she knew which of the shapes out on the field was him, with his shock of blond hair that started to darken only after the Games. And, of course, she was aware the moment he entered the single class they shared, usually after she did because she wasn't distracted in the halls by frivolous pursuits like talking to people.

He sat on the opposite side of the room. She doesn't know if he ever looked in her direction because she never looked in his.

They're connected in a way that she can't understand, in a way that she wishes they weren't. She didn't know what it was, this inexplicable tie. Her heart didn't race when she thought about him. She didn't imagine holding his hand or him kissing her, like she often heard the girls discussing at the next lunch table over. But she also didn't feel the same about him that she did Gale.

She just…watched. Watched and tried to figure out how someone could just up and save her life without wanting anything in return. It doesn't work that way in District 12. It doesn't work that way anywhere, not in this world.

When she was in tenth grade, they had to give an oral presentation in vocations class. Katniss strongly considered being sick that day. What does it matter if she failed? If you fail school, the Peacekeepers assign you the jobs no one wants, like collecting garbage and cleaning the outhouses. But she'd missed too many days that year already, to ensure that her family had food on the table. She won't get assigned any of the good vocations. As if there are any.

She doesn't even remember what her presentation was about, what skill she'd shared. Nothing real, like how to skin a rabbit. Probably something safe, like how to plant your very own herb garden, courtesy of the little she'd gleaned from Prim on the subject. She doesn't remember a thing about her presentation.

But she does remember Peeta's.

He gave a speech about the right way to ice a cake. Replete with visual aids. He stood easily before them and spoke in that soft voice of his, punctuating key statements with a smile. Even his friends stopped pelting each other with wads of paper. She could see his passion sneak in through his eyes. They'd even interacted briefly, as he handed out "slices" of his miniature cake to the class. She remembers pocketing hers for Prim.

His face was wide open, without deception.

He was beautiful then.

Then came the Reaping, one that she'd remember forever. Long after similar days water-colored together in memory—Effie a neon blob, Haymitch a staggering smell, the square full of whitewashed faces—she would remember Peeta standing before them, spine ramrod straight and fists clenched. He didn't cry.

The girl next to him was a simple girl from the Seam named Ana. It's almost always a girl from the Seam. She was crying, the worst thing you can do. Everyone else at the gathering was quiet, for this was a wake. Everyone knew that these two children standing before them were dead.

Peeta's eyes were restless, roving across the crowd. Then he stilled, seeming to find what he was looking for. She could have sworn that he was looking right at her. She raised her chin, held his gaze.

Then she watched his back disappear into the maw of the Justice Hall doors. She watched as his family gathered slowly, stunned, into a clump in front of the steps. She watched as his friends, the people for whom he'd always had a smile and a tease, slunk back to their homes. No sense in talking to a dead person, that's the way of it.

* * *

><p>Evening of the interviews, and they watched Ceasar Flickerman's leather-dark skin and trademark toothy grimace, which passes in the Capitol as a smile. She watched the interviews carefully, evaluating. The coy beauty from 2, the fox-faced girl from 4, the Capitol-favorite Cato.<p>

The boy from District 12 was last.

"Tell me, Peeta. Is there someone special back home?"

Not really, he said, with a reluctance that hinted at truth.

Ceasar was incredulous, such a handsome young lad like him. Peeta finally admitted that there was this one girl.

"What's her name?"

And Katniss went cold. She knew, without knowing how she knew, which name he would say. And what it might mean if he did.

He hesitated, just a fraction of a moment. "Her name is Mara."

It was almost a relief, that the name wasn't hers. But lying in the dark that night, with Prim nestled into her side, it came to her, drifting down on a moonbeam.

There was no one in District 12 named Mara.

* * *

><p>Afterward, Katniss was moody for days, even snapping at Prim, who didn't understand what was wrong.<p>

What was wrong was that Peeta didn't stand a chance. She knew it, he knew it, everybody knew it. His mother even started planning his funeral. Peeta was strong but slight. And more than that, he was kind and gentle. The type of person who saves lives, not destroys them. Certainly not the type of person who murders children with his bare hands or whatever weapon the Game Makers thought would be entertaining to butcher children with this year.

Or so she'd thought.

So they'd all thought.

The simple girl from the Seam was the first person he killed.


	8. Chapter 8

The morning is gray and soupy when Katniss drags herself from bed. She has a long walk today, to the furthest exit from home. Over the years, she and Gale have devised several exits through the fence, varying their routes regularly, the better to conceal the evidence of their passing. This is the closest one they risk so near to town and to the Peacekeepers.

The crisp air slaps her awake.

When she's close to the usual section of fence, she hovers in the shadow of the nearest building, a dangerously sagging shed, listening. The morning is still and quiet, too early for even the miners. No telltale buzz of electricity like tracker jackers through the wire. The only thing that stirs is a half-hearted sign on the fence, dotted with rust and warped with time, creaking in the breeze.

All is as it should be.

Yet still she lingers, something preventing her from taking that first step. Her hunter's instinct, perhaps, that elusive sense that something's amiss. And that's when she sees it, a shape emerge from a cluster of shacks dozens of meters away. Her blood freezes, but Katniss doesn't startle, doesn't betray her presence.

Looking closer, she sees the blond hair, that frame. She doesn't know how, but she's sure it's him. It's Peeta. Few others from the town would be caught dead in the Seam. He's carrying a pack of something on one shoulder and what looks to be lumber under his arm.

As she watches, he stuffs his bag through the fence and then follows, bending awkwardly and getting his boot tangled in the wire.

She frowns, feeling a surge of anger, an increasingly common response to something he's done. He just ducked under her fence. Into her woods. Hers and Gale's. She watches until he retreats to the trees, then slinks out of her hiding spot and heads parallel to the fence.

As she draws close, her anger grows. His boots have matted the grass in the area, a clear sign that he's come this way often. Quickly, she darts under the wire and jogs toward where she saw him disappear between the trees. His trail isn't hard to follow. She sees a broken twig here and boot tread there. He places his feet in all the wrong places, places with leaves and twigs and soft dirt.

Soon, she can hear him, tramping through the underbrush like a herd of wild hogs. He doesn't even hear her coming.

"Are you trying to get caught?" she calls.

To his credit, he doesn't wince away from her voice. Just stops and swivels until he can see her amid the trees. His face darkens, and he turns away.

She persists, matching his pace. "Seriously, do you even know what will happen if you get caught?"

"It won't matter," he snaps over his shoulder and speeds up, dismissive.

She's speechless. Peeta doesn't understand. He doesn't understand at all. Well, she'll make him understand. In two long strides, she catches up to him and wrenches at his shoulder, before she can think. Muscles bunch dangerously beneath her grip, but he does nothing more than whirl to face her, shrugging his arm emphatically out of reach.

They glare at each other, a standoff. He's angry. She's angrier.

"Wrong," she barks. "It does matter. Because if they catch you, they catch me." They catch Gale. "They'll turn the fence back on." Or worse. "This," she says, and she's saying too much. "This is my life."

Oh, he's looking at her now, eyes locked onto her face, as though she's revealing some deep secret. It unnerves her, his frank stare, so she says no more. The silence breathes, as only the forest can.

"I'll make you a deal," he says at last, surveying the trees. "If you don't kick me out of your forest…" He looks at her out of the corner of his eye. "I won't kick you out of my house again."

Anger dissipates. For a moment, she sees the boy-that-was, and her chest clenches. He's almost joking with her. He's almost smiling. This from the man who but a few weeks ago was shouting spittle into her face.

"Why did you?" The question slips out. She's always been this way, blurting what needs to be said, even at inopportune moments.

His jaw twitches, eyes hard. For a moment, she thinks he might not answer, that he might just walk away. Then, he says, all soft-like, "You surprised me, is all."

Startled him like a snake under leaves, its first instinct to attack. Katniss decides to leave it be, whatever nerve she's found here.

Instead, she deadpans back to safer territory. "I'll make sure to make more noise next time." Next time, she says, as though there's going to be one. "And you. You need to make less noise."

He cocks his head. "What?"

She stamps in place, making sure to crunch every twig, every leaf beneath boat feet. "This is you. You walk like a rock." He just stares at her. "Here's your first lesson. Stay away from this and this." She pokes at the offending patches of ground with the tip of her boot. "And in fact, if you come out here at all, there are rules."

"Oh yeah?" His eyebrow quirks.

"Yes. To start, vary your routes," she says. "And your days and times. Always check to see if someone's watching before you head under the fence. I could have been anybody."

He blinks away some unbidden expression, too quick to read. "But you're not."

His words and gaze are heavy, those depthless eyes that see more than she wants them to. She shouldn't be out here with him, in the woods, alone, despite his offer of a truce. But it's been so easy, so natural, lobbing insults at him. It shouldn't be this easy. They're still connected in some way that she can't understand, in a way she wishes they weren't.

Now it's Katniss' turn to walk away, heading toward her fallen log, toward safety. She's vaguely uncomfortable to hear him follow, unable to shrug off her unease at having him behind her. When she picks up her pace, so does he. But he stops when she reaches her log, when she extracts first her knife, then her bow from its cradle. She feels better with it in her hand.

He eyes her weapon with interest. "So this is the famous bow."

"Famous?" She frowns. "Famous how?"

He just looks at it for another long moment, his jaw twitching. The type of pause she's growing to understand is his answer. Sure enough, he changes the subject. "How's your leg?"

It catches her off guard; she hasn't thought of her leg in weeks. "All better." Whatever Capitol meds he'd used—in addition to the morphling—had worked wonders.

"Good," he says.

Silence stretches, awkward. Katniss feels like a turtle on its back.

Then, since he broached the topic, she ventures, "Thank you, by the way. For your help."

His mouth curves in the shadow of a smile. Then he turns and just keeps walking to wherever it is he was going, ignoring everything she'd said about his tread.

He doesn't look back.

She listens until he's gone.

* * *

><p>The following week, Katniss steps onto Peeta's porch for the first time since they'd exchanged door slams. She stands for a moment, disdaining the doorbell. Instead, she starts to bounce on the balls of her feet, softly at first and then heavier and heavier until the floorboards slap with the strain. The racket is so loud she expects they can hear it clear to town.<p>

Peeta wrenches open the door, eyes wild.

She stops, says, "You've got a loose board."

He glares at her for several deep breaths, then takes the proffered package without a word. There's a smudge of something blue on his face, the color of his eyes. Then he just gives her a Peacekeeper's salute (his middle finger). It's also spattered with something. Pastry flour, colorful spices, perhaps. As the door closes between them, she thinks she almost sees a smile.

Part of her is relieved. It wouldn't do to be seen entering the Victor's house. It's bad enough she spent three days there.

Another part of her feels something else.

* * *

><p>Even after Sae's leg gets to feeling better, and walking the mile out to the Victor's Village would be good for her, Katniss continues to deliver Peeta's stew.<p>

She never asks him why he takes Sae's wares, what with his fancy Capitol rations. Maybe he's not so different from the rest of them. Maybe he's developed a fondness for Sae's stew, no two batches alike. Or maybe it's the company, although Katniss could never tell it, from the way he's still barely civil to her when he meets (not really greets) her at the door.

* * *

><p>The General Store is bustling with Townies browsing the recently restocked shelves. Katniss doesn't usually come here in the afternoon, preferring to trade with the shopkeeper in the twilight hours when she has something more substantial to offer. But today, she needs a special item.<p>

The shopkeeper's burly apprentice, Oak, spies her immediately from where he's replenishing the salt bins. Despite his size, he's young and eager, a sapling that has yet to grow into his namesake. Unlike most of the remaining bachelors in Town, he has an excuse to talk to her.

True to form, he stops mid-task, stepping around two other patrons, and approaches her with a wide smile. "That goat done chewed through her lead again?"

"Unfortunately, yes." Katniss offers a smile of her own and reaches up to help him untangle strands of her favorite rope from a hook above. Gale's snares go through a lot of rope. She alternates buying new lengths of it from various vendors in town.

Distantly, she hears the door chime tinkle. She wouldn't have even given it a second thought until Oak stills. The shopkeeper, who was previously swearing up and down that "it's my final price, take it or leave it," pauses, mid-sentence, to stare in the direction of the door. The mood in the store, formerly industrious, has gone as silent as it does sometimes in the woods, when all the animals sense a predator.

Katniss cranes her head around a tower of pickaxes, seeing immediately what's caused the stir. It's Peeta. He's browsing alone in the far corner of the store, purposefully minding his own business. There's a moment where it's quiet, where this could all be okay. Having looked their fill, satisfied that the Victor isn't about to whip out a knife and start a slaughter, the other patrons turn back to their own affairs.

Oak resumes unfurling the rope.

Then a voice rings out. "Look who we have here." It's Bo, stepping from some back corner. Bo, whose father is the shopkeeper. "The mighty Victor, come to grace us mere mortals with his presence."

Beside Katniss, Oak mutters a curse.

Peeta doesn't turn, doesn't acknowledge Bo's challenge. Yet Katniss can see the tight planes of his back, at the ready.

Pointedly, Katniss turns back to Oak. "Can I actually get a few yards extra? Don't want to have to stop in here again this month." In the silence, her words seem unnaturally loud. But they do the trick, as Oak's eyes snap back to her face. Other customers follow her lead, gathering their supplies, albeit a bit more hastily than before.

Katniss can feel Bo's heated stare as he spies her for the first time. She ignores him as Oak wraps the rope neatly for her and secures it with some twine. Her palms sweat.

Bo's eyes are fixed again on Peeta, as unblinking as Buttercup when she stalks a mouse. For a while, he says nothing else, just keeps watching as Peeta gathers up his supplies and steps up to where Bo leans on the counter, too close. "Nuh uh. Maybe you haven't heard. We don't serve your kind in here."

Peeta responds by reaching into his pocket. He stares straight at the shopkeeper and procures a gold coin, stamped with the President's familiar visage, plunking it on the counter, next to his would-be purchases.

Bo makes as if to speak, but his father raises an arm, cowing his son into submission. Apparently not the first time he's raised a hand to his boy. Then he hefts the coin and brings it gingerly between his teeth, taking an experimental bite. Disgusted, Bo huffs and disappears back into whatever back room he'd crawled out of.

The shopkeeper sets the coin down, although his fingers linger. "I don't have change for that." He sounds almost wistful.

"I don't need any." Then Peeta raises his voice. "I'd like to cover what everyone else is getting."

There's a moment where it could go either way. Where the folks in the store could just put down their items and walk out, rather than accept charity from the Victor. And they might have done exactly that, had not Katniss immediately stepped forward, setting her rope down on the counter, right beside Peeta's stuff.

The shopkeeper does math in his head. Even with the supplies folks have already pulled off the shelves, Peeta's coin is still generous. But he says no more as the other customers slowly add their bounty to the pile, skirting Peeta as though he's a leper. The Townie housewife comes over, her arms bulging with twice the load as before.

Peeta plucks away his purchases. His eyes slide over Katniss, no spark of recognition, as if she's not even there. Then he's gone, the door tinkling his departure. She waits a few breaths until she's sure he's gone, then she heads out herself, flicking a few fingers at Oak. She catches a glimpse of Bo's face from a doorway in the back, watching her.

Behind her, the housewife says, "Can I add one more thing?"

* * *

><p>Katniss finishes the last of her errands, stopping at the tailor and the carpenter for Sae, then the florist for Prim. By the time she's done, payment and messages delivered, there are fewer folks on the streets. Still, she cuts down the side alleys, heading for her shortcut to the Hob. She walks straight toward the sun, which is beginning to dazzle as it sets, a mélange of soft oranges, purples, and blues.<p>

She's almost out of town when it happens.

Someone steps out from a back doorway in the alley, blocking her path. The person is silhouetted by sunset. For a moment, one split second, Katniss feels a stab of fear. Her grip tightens on her rope, her only weapon. She remembers the look on Bo's face when she'd shamed him—again—in public. He could have headed out after she did, waited for her in this back alley…

But the silhouette is smaller than Bo, familiar.

"Are you alone?" Peeta says, glancing over her shoulder. His voice is tight.

"Yes." Rather than reassure him, her answer seems to agitate him further. With another glance behind her, he reaches out to grab her forearm, tugging her to follow him from the alley, out of the town. It doesn't even occur to her to resist.

His fingers dig harshly into the flesh of her arm, he pulls her along, walking so quickly that she stumbles to keep up. They round a cluster of shrubs, hiding them from view.

"What are you doing?" Katniss demands, wrenching herself from his grasp, dropping her rope. He whirls on her.

"What am I doing?" he echoes in disbelief. "What are you doing?"

And she knows he's not talking about now. He's talking about earlier, in the shop.

"I'm just—" she begins, but he shakes his head immediately.

"Just don't." Peeta's tone slashes like a knife. "Whatever it is you think you're doing, just stop. Don't do me any more favors."

Favors, he says. Just like that day he did her a favor and saved her life.

"It's not right," she fires back. "The way they treat you—"

"Of course it's right!" Peeta roars, and she takes a step back. His eyes are diamonds. "It's exactly right. You know it. I know it. The whole world knows it." They stare at each other for a long time, until his breathing slows and something in his gaze softens. "Just…don't," he repeats.

"Fine," she snaps. "If Bo tries to kill you again, I'll just stand aside and watch."

"Be my guest."

She's boiling, turning to leave, hefting her rope back over her shoulder.

"Katniss. Wait."

She doesn't turn. But she waits.

"Vary your routes. And don't walk alone." He's repeating them back to her, her rules for the forest. But this time they're rules in a very different game. "I could have been anyone."

She's not sure if it's a threat or a warning.

* * *

><p>When she arrives at the Hob at last, there's a seat waiting for her at Gale's table. Not beside him, not anymore, but there's still always a seat. She can feel his eyes on her as soon as she sits down. But he's a bit too far away for easy conversation. And she dissuades him from trying by immediately turning to Merl and asking for the latest Thread exploit.<p>

Normally, she's the first to take a hint as the miners begin to drain their final mugs. But tonight she lingers, engrossing herself in conversations that weave around her. From across the table, she can see Gale shifting, trying to catch her eye. Thom has already taken his leave for the evening, and Gale sits alone, his empty glass abandoned a good many minutes earlier.

He hasn't walked her home alone, not since the night he'd proposed. Somehow they've always found themselves in a group headed back to the Seam. Gale's buddies or one of his siblings. But she's not surprised when he rises right after she takes her leave of Merl. She's not surprised when he falls easily into step. Their normal crew has gone on ahead, voices drifting back in the darkness.

Gale doesn't seem to be in a hurry to catch up with them, and so they amble in silence for a long while. She's forgotten how effortless it is, being with Gale. Like he's a part of her.

Then he shatters the feeling.

"So what happened today?" The casual question is anything but. It's his way of letting her know the rumor mill has been hard at work.

She dodges, launching into her latest hunting inventory. She's in the middle of telling him how she'd snapped the rope on not two but three of his traps—probably tying the knot wrong—when he stops her.

"Katniss."

And this is the point where he asks her, point blank, why she stepped up in that store. This is the point where he reams her for being so stupid, for walking home alone at dusk. To stay away from Peeta, to stay away from Bo.

But he says none of this. Instead, he asks her something else entirely. Something quiet, something deep. "I've given you time. I've given you space. What else can I do?"

"Gale..." she begins, but the words won't come.

He waits until it's clear he might be waiting forever. "What else can I do? Tell me, Katniss. I'll do anything."

She thinks about it. She thinks for too long, about this something that Gale could do.

"So it's true," he says, something closing in his face. "There's someone else."

Inexplicably, she thinks of paint the color of a robin's egg.

Gale sees the truth in her eyes.

"People talk," he says.

She's tired of this, so very tired, all the gossip. All the things people say. About her, about everyone.

"And…?" she snaps at last. "What do these people say?"

"That you've been seeing the Victor." He spits the word, like it's dirty.

And here she was thinking that he'd heard about the store today. Oh, he's heard about the store. And apparently so much more. All those weeks of delivering stew. Sae's super private arrangement with Peeta apparently isn't so private, at least not in the Seam.

"What, like they talk about you and me? Were they right about us?" It's more harsh than she intended. It's his answer.

"I guess not."

But she's not done. She and Gale have always been like this—two fires, merging into a conflagration. "Besides, why do you even care? You've been a bit busy, what with you spending more and more nights behind that black curtain."

Gale stiffens, eyes immediately clouding with something. Shock, then guilt. Katniss' stomach twists. So it's true, then, what they say about what goes on behind the black curtain. About what some Seam girls do back there.

He doesn't speak for a long moment, just breathes, looking down and away. Then he says, in a dangerous tone she's never heard him use before. "Well, at least I'm just looking, not touching. Can't say the same for your precious Victor."

"He doesn't…" she begins, but then she remembers. She remembers the Seam woman, on her way to Peeta's house. The defiant jut to her chin. Katniss has seen her at a couple other times. Young, desperate, like she used to be. Like the women who lined up outside Cray's.

Gale's eyes snap to hers, almost a physical blow. "Oh, I'm sorry," he snarls. "Did I disturb your delicate sensibilities? What, did you think those women go to his place just to share some soup? Grow up, Katniss." He bites her name, so sharp.

All she can do is stare at him, this stranger who wears Gale's face. He knows he's gone too far, this person who can read her better than anyone else. Their conversation is over. She won't say another word.

"Don't worry," he says. "I won't bother you again."

And then he just leaves her there, an entirely new chill in his wake.


	9. Chapter 9

Food has always been a tenuous link between them. First the bread, now the stew. Although she can't explain why she does it, Katniss continues to deliver it to him, week after week. Now, though, she's careful not to announce herself, careful not to do him any favors. She leaves the package on his doorstep, makes no sound, a ghost in this graveyard.

Then, one dusk, something is different. She senses it the moment she steps into the village of one, past the fence that now swings open at her touch. There's an unusual scent and sound in the air.

He's not alone.

She knows it by the way the air thrums, that low murmur of conversation that swells as she draws closer. For a moment, she thinks about the woman she still sometimes sees like a wraith between the tombs.

The house at the end of the street glows. There's light in every window, curtains parted, and the porch door is even ajar, exposing a tantalizing glimpse into a forbidden world.

Katniss knows she should dump the package and go, leave Peeta to his company. Her chest feels tight. Just a few more steps until she can stretch out and leave it on the porch. But when she takes those few steps, she doesn't reach out. She doesn't leave it on the porch. Instead, she stares.

For there, through the gap in the door, she can see Peeta.

And Peeta's smiling. Really smiling, like she remembers from when they were but children, like the day he proudly showed the class how to frost a cake. There's a woman, yes, but there's also a man. All she can see of them is the backs of their heads, sticking up from the couch. From the color of their skin and hair, they're most definitely not Seam.

She stares and stares, trying to understand this thing that she's seeing, this window into the past.

When Peeta finally spies her, framed in the kitchen door, the laughter wipes off his face. His visitors swivel to see what's caused such a radical change. Their garb is garbled, a final sign they're not from 12. Visitors from beyond, she's never heard of such a thing. In a beat, Peeta pushes off his chair and strides toward her, blocking her view of his guests.

He stops at the door, one hand poised to close it, and this is the moment. The moment when he tells her to leave, when he humiliates her in front of these people who have somehow made him smile.

But before he can say anything, before he can very coldly tell her to go, go, always go, someone pokes around him. It's a man. A man so goldenly handsome it steals her breath away.

"Who's your friend?" the man says. His obscene mouth lingers a bit on friend.

Peeta steps aside, not exactly beckoning, but no longer blocking. "Katniss Everdeen," he says, too formally, not looking at her. He's introducing her, it's only polite. Then he'll ask her to leave, this is a private party.

"Katniss," the golden man drawls, drawing out the last syllable as he extends his hand. "A pleasure to meet such a fine specimen of District 12. Peeta's apparently been keeping you to himself all these years."

Before she can respond, the man is tugging on her arm, guiding her gently but firmly over the threshold and into the house. So smooth and suave that she's standing awkwardly in the kitchen before she or Peeta can say anything at all.

Peeta introduces them as Finnick and Johanna and of course. Victors from District 4 and 7. They look different than they do on the monitors, and Katniss had not expected to see them here. Like seeing larger-than-life statues suddenly start talking and walking around.

"Positively provincial," Johanna comments from where she's draped over the arm of the couch, eyeing Katniss' boots, which she's wearing below a skirt. It doesn't sound like a compliment.

They've come bearing gifts, an assortment of gleaming packages and bottles heaped on Peeta's usually barren dining table, delicacies the likes of which Katniss has never before seen, much less is able to name.

"Fill a plate," Finnick says, plucking one from a cabinet and tossing it like a toy. She catches it easily, before she realizes that it's fine and light, like the china that Madge's mother uses on special occasions. She nearly drops it.

Katniss chokes down a few bites of a delicate cake, too sweet, and takes a flute of the blue liquid only to be polite.

Then Finnick beckons to her from where he and Johanna have curled on the sofa (it's bigger than Katniss' bed), patting the cushion between them as though there's even a remote chance that's where she'll sit. Perhaps, given the theme of their greeting, they want to pet her, like a cat. Instead, she eases into the armchair farthest from them, opposite Peeta, who sits stiffly in the other. In the dim light of the dancing fire, shadows shroud his face.

"So, Kat," Finnick says, "may I call you Kat?"

Her gaze snaps from where she'd been staring into the fire, lulled by its warm embrace and her full belly. In shock, she sees that Finnick seems to have lost his shirt. And Johanna's is sinking dangerously low on one shoulder, so low that Katniss can see she's not wearing any support beneath. Her left breast crests dangerously above her generous collar.

"No."

He throws back his head and laughs, exposing a regal neck, and she's fascinated. She doesn't think he gets told no often.

"Katniss, then. Do tell. What do you do?"

"I…" Katniss begins, but catches herself before she tells them that she hunts. The blue liquid has loosened her tongue. "I sell junk."

They stare at her for a moment, as though she's the one speaking another language.

Johanna perks. "Got any on you? I could use a good hit of junk right now." She winks at Peeta.

"Not that type of junk," Peeta explains. Then, out of the blue, he tacks on, "And I wouldn't call it junk. It's recycled bits of our culture."

Startled, she looks over at him. He somehow knows what she does, down at the Seam. She's never seen there. And she's unsure why he's defending her, why he's spinning what she does in such a positive light. But all she can see is the fire dancing in his eyes.

* * *

><p>Hours bleed off into the night. They discuss names and places from the Capitol, some people she's heard of (like Coriolanus, or Ol' Anus, as Finnick puts it) and some people she hasn't, bizarre names like Araminta and Heavensbee. Finnick drops some rather juicy anecdotes. Johanna curses like a sailor. Katniss doesn't recognize all the words, but she knows the tone. Like her, Peeta remains mostly silent, answering only the occasional question, content to bask in their glow.<p>

When it's so late that Peeta's guests are growing sleepy and sloppy (a combination of their travels, the hour, and the drink), Peeta hints that it's time for bed, whether because it truly is or because he's noticed that Katniss' head is nodding to her chest. She should have left a long time ago (work comes early every morning), but something has kept her here, slowly sinking into this chair until she feels, impossibly, like she belongs in this world. Like maybe, in a different life, she could have been part of this ragtag group of Capitol misfits.

She nods and stands, depositing her plate into the sink, and finds that Peeta has followed her back into the kitchen. He flips the switch to illuminate the porch, so she can see where she's going, and then steps with her out into the night. She's never seen him so pliant, so open. Not since the forest.

So she dares something. She teases. "What, no lectures about not walking alone?"

Peeta almost smiles at her. But before he can retort, they become very aware of listening ears and then Johanna's arms, encircling Peeta's torso from behind. He doesn't move, doesn't fend them off, these stroking tendrils, just keeps looking at Katniss, right at her.

"Maybe," Finnick slurs over her shoulder, breath a warm puff in her ear, a sudden heat at her back, "you don't have to go." And then he punctuates his less-than-subtle hint with a firm brush of her backside.

In one instant (just one second), Katniss has his wrist wrenched behind him, his arm at an unnatural angle, bearing down with all her weight in a grip that could snap the bones in his arm. The three Victors are instantly on alert, shedding the late hour and the liquor like snakeskin.

In that instant, she's surrounded by killers, three people who brutally murdered children, some while they slept. Johanna's hands have sprouted knives, and Peeta's jaw is dangerously sharp.

Katniss merely wrenches, the way Gale once showed her, and Finnick's eyes go white and wide. "Touch me again," she says, craning her mouth next to his ear, sweetly mimicking his lascivious tone, "and I'll cut off your thumbs and stuff them in your Ol' Anus." Then she shoves his unresisting body away. He stumbles, making a sound like a goose, a real laugh. The first real sound she's heard from him this night.

"It's always the quiet ones," he smirks, palming his shoulder. His smile becomes a crescent moon, curved and bright, as he glances toward Peeta. "I get it now." There's something in his face, like a secret.

Johanna also seems fascinated, eyes aflame. "I'll bet you're just a spitfire in bed." As if to accentuate the sentiment, she shimmies her shirt right off. Her eyes never leave Katniss' face. To his credit, neither do Peeta's, although Finnick is certainly appreciating the view.

Katniss stares at them a beat longer, unimpressed. Then she turns and stalks off into the night, emphatically alone.

* * *

><p>She's not sure what to expect, delivering stew to Peeta the following week. Finnick and Johanna are long gone, off to wherever it is they go. Back to their Districts, perhaps. Or to the Capitol, where Johanna can score some junk.<p>

Somehow, she's not surprised to see Peeta sitting on the porch, waiting for her. He takes her brown sack as silently as ever, the planes of his body tight, uncomfortable. A far cry from the other night, fire loosening his limbs and his tongue. When she doesn't immediately turn away, he just sits and waits, a first.

"Your friends…" She's not even sure what she's trying to say. She's not even really sure they're his friends.

"That's them," is Peeta's reply, as if that explains everything. And maybe it does. He says nothing more, doesn't apologize. Doesn't invite her in. She doesn't expect him to.

Yet still she lingers, him just sitting there, staring at his feet. He crumples the brown sack up in one fist, tight. Then he sighs and stands, poised on the step. "Can you pass a message to Sae?"

"Yes."

"I won't need stew for a while." And of course. It's mid-year. The time when all Victors are required to make their bi-annual appearance in the Capitol.

"I'll let her know."

Peeta nods, tight, and steps back onto his porch. Dismissing her, like he does.

He doesn't say goodbye.

* * *

><p>Katniss stands with everyone in the square, bundled against the encroaching chill, as yet another burly Victor from District 1 recites a speech regaling the glory and honor of the Capitol. Behind her huddle the families of District 12's fallen Tributes, exposed on a raised platform. The faces of their dead children are monoliths.<p>

The applause is like a weak rattle of bone.

Then the train snakes away, off to eleven other districts, eleven other speeches, other monolithic faces, eyes forever staring, names already forgotten. At night, Katniss watches the recaps during the mandatory viewing hour, speeches spliced with scenes from the Games, year after unending year. Today, tomorrow, forever.

She watches footage from the President's Ball most closely, looking past the people who are in foreground focus to the circus that cavorts in the periphery. It's a game she plays every year, habitually watching for things the Capitol doesn't necessarily intend for them to see. She spies Finnick on the arm of a stately matron twice his age, a split second of Johanna towering and glowering by the liquor. And then Peeta in a clump of admirers, male or female, who can tell, coy hands on his shoulders, head blown back in a laugh.

But the camera mostly neglects them, these Victors from another era, the Capitol forever panting after younger, fresher meat, which the Victor from District 1 seems more than happy to provide, all sinew and skin.

Then comes the Harvest Festival, the final half-hearted hurrah in this celebration of dubious victory. The Capitol continues to lavish its attention on District 1, leaving eleven other districts to collect their meager surplus of supplies, one of the few nights that those in the poorer districts are guaranteed a full belly.

To help extend the paltry surplus from the Capitol, Mayor Undersee throws a real shindig in the Town square, everyone's invited. The mines even let off early so that the whole district can join in the festivities.

"You're coming, Katniss?" Prim asks because she doesn't always. In past years, Katniss has often slipped off for a few extra hours in the woods, Peacekeeper attention elsewhere.

But this year, she says, "Yes." She lets Prim talk her into wearing her Reaping dress, the light blue one that Prim insists brings out her eyes, though she does opt for the warmth of her leggings and boots (what would Johanna say). She even lets Mother braid her hair.

By the time the Everdeens arrive, the square swarms, chock full of vendors peddling food and fun. The regular shops along the periphery are thrown wide, many providing samples of their wares as door prizes. The Bakery seems to be the most popular, with its crumbles of cookies and mini muffins.

Prim is so lovely on Rory's arm, cheeks patted pink by the wind. Katniss shadows the lovebirds for a while, watching as Rory displays some manly brawn to win Prim a honeysuckle from the florist, which he tucks behind her ear. It hurts, how much Rory sometimes looks like Gale. Katniss hangs back, tries to lose herself in the crowd.

Then someone says her name and she looks over to see Madge, detaching from her coterie of women and children, her youngest in tow.

"She's walking!" Katniss exclaims because my, how time flies.

"Much to my horror," Madge confirms. In a surge of stage fright, the child promptly stumbles and folds into the dirt. "You're all right," Madge soothes and hands down one of the toys that's all the rage right now in the Seam, twigs and twine. The child rivets. Madge's attention swings back, a spotlight. "How have you been?"

"Same as always." Year after unending year.

"Thanks for the package, by the way," Madge says, referring to a few weeks earlier, when Katniss had dropped another rabbit off with her husband, at his shop.

"Of course. Did you try it with the sage?"

"Amazing," Madge moans. "I was just over at Sae's telling her thanks for the tip." The one day of the year where Sae can peddle her stew to the masses, Katniss' rabbit and pheasant masquerading today as goat, right here in the shadow of the Peacekeeper's lair, the Justice building.

Madge sobers, pleasantries fulfilled. "Is Gale here?" There's something there, in her tone, her eyes. She's heard things.

"I…haven't seen him." Refused to look, more like it, afraid she'll find someone on his arm. It's only a matter of time, no shortage of interest, girls who have shot daggers at Katniss for years. Only a matter of time until he moves past looking to touching.

Besides, Katniss has been too busy looking for someone else. Someone she expects will still be a footnote in this festival, still out of foreground focus.

Bless her, the child grows fussy, clutching at skirts. Madge hesitates, more questions swarming like tracker jackers, but duty calls. The other mothers mill, restless, waiting for Madge to rejoin the herd. "I'll catch you later?" Katniss prompts, giving her the out.

"Yes, do. Stop by soon," Madge says, warm and earnest, giving her a quick hug and a final glance, a promise. Then she's gone, absorbed back into the motherly amoeba.

But now that Madge has planted the seed about Gale, Katniss can't help but look for him in the crowd, him a head taller than most, not hard to miss. She ambles aimlessly around the square, stopping at booths mostly as an excuse to survey the nearby folks.

She cranes and scouts and finally spies. He's here alright, and—a fist of her heart–he's not alone. And he's also…dancing? Standing, at least, in the thick of an impromptu two-step before a ragtag band with a few fiddles and some spoons, smiling broad and twirling his partner, do si do. Katniss cranes to see, this sprite who has him so open and easy. She's slight and quick and…Posy. That's Gale, dancing with his sister.

They've always been able to find each other, in the woods, in a crowd. Look up at a Reaping and Gale's there, mouthing something to make her smile. Look up right now and the crowd parts, and they're standing and staring, Gale's smile fading to a weary wariness. Posy follows Gale's gaze and lights up, the opposite.

"Katniss, Katniss," she chirps, grabbing and dragging her to where Gale is trying, without success, to sidestep away through a wall of twirl and whirl. Posy snags his sleeve as well, pulls them together as though they're dolls. "You hold my spot. I need a drink." And then she scampers off, presumably to find the punch.

Katniss and Gale are left to face off, an island of solemnity amid the revelry. There's a moment where Gale could still take flight, where his darting eyes consider it, until they focus on her face.

He takes a deep breath, extends a hand. "Shall we?" He knows she doesn't dance, certainly not in front of people, but he's asked anyway. It's almost a challenge, a glint in his eye. Giving her yet another chance, even though he said he wouldn't.

Before she can tell him no, he gathers her up, warm hand on her waist, capturing her other hand in his. Waits a beat until he's sure she won't bolt. Then he leads, and she follows. He doesn't try to emulate the simple hop-bop going on all around, although they both certainly could. Instead, they shuffle, a slow corkscrew, counter clockwise. He's so tall he makes her feel small.

It's awkward, trying not to meet his eyes.

"So," he says, all dramatic, as though he's going to drop some new bomb. "Tell me the stats."

She huffs a laugh. "You'll be happy to know I've managed to break all four of your whip snares." The ones with the most delicate of triggers, that gracefully swing the prey out of reach of other would-be hunters.

Gale winces. She remembers how many hours he'd spent crafting those, with his sure, careful hands. Hands that now hold her so sure, so careful.

"I can show you again how to set them."

"I'd rather you set them." It slips out like a sigh, this admission that she needs her hunting partner. She needs Gale. He's shown her how to set his snares, many a time. It's not about knowing how. It's about feeling how, this innate ability he has to somehow understand the mind of his prey.

They're quiet for a long moment, swaying, Gale holding her at a stiff arm's length. Then he says, all quiet, "You can't have it both ways."

His tone is like the subtle snap of a snare. But before they can say more, words trapped on tongues, Gale stops and straightens, suddenly alert. His expression goes dark, the bubble burst, and he pushes past her. Katniss cranes to see what inspired this shift.

There, standing next to Posy at the fringes of the crowd, is Peeta. Unmistakable, even slicked and froufed as he still is, fresh from the Capitol, just in time to help District 12 celebrate yet another Harvest, his final obligation of the Victory Tour. He stands out like neon in a smear of muted blues and grays. His ridiculous getup likely costs more than most Seam families make in a year.

Posy is animated, happily swilling her punch out of its paper cone as she acts out whatever scene of her story she's telling him, seemingly unfazed by his getup. Peeta has one ear cocked to Posy's prattle. But he's looking right at Katniss, looking right at her dancing so cozy with Gale.

And this is what Gale sees—the Victor too close to his baby sister. No matter that Peeta and Posy are in full view of half the town, and Capitol cameras besides. No matter that Peeta stands with his hands in his pockets, carefully unmoving.

This is what Gale sees, and this is what Gale does: bears through the crowd, broad shoulders parting people like chaff. Katniss rides in his wake, willing him to stay calm stay calm. This is not the time nor the place to make a scene. There are eyes everywhere, organic and artificial alike. Gale knows this. Gale knows this better than anyone, him and his conspiracy theories. So Gale turns on the charm. Gale turns on the smooth. Gale plasters on a fake smile and focuses his attention 100% on Posy, the only person here.

"There's my ballerina," he says, kneeling to eye level. "How about that piggy ride?" Posy does not turn down piggy rides, although she does give Peeta a jaunty wave. Two seconds flat, Gale has plucked her from the scene, arms flung around his neck, and they're away with nary a word. The message is clear, concise, and incisive as a snare.

Katniss stills and stands, trapped between two worlds. Unwilling to follow Gale. Unable to approach Peeta. He won't even look at her, here with so many eyes to see. So she can only watch, at the edge of a crowd, as the Victor walks away.


	10. Chapter 10

Winter gnaws with icy teeth, sending a barrage of blizzards to force the denizens of District 12 even further into their cages. Prim and Mother are kept busy with an epidemic of pneumonia and frostbite. They alternate nights of frantic knocking with long evenings planning and sewing by the fire, slowly reworking a dress that Madge has handed down, fancy fabric from the Capitol. Mother's teaching Prim to make the alterations herself, as her hands shake too badly now and not just from the cold.

Katniss struggles to pass the hours, her slowest months, shivering alone in Sae's flimsy booth in the Seam, wearing every layer she owns, her father's jacket on top. Few patrons brave the weather. The ones who do are desperate for essentials, bringing anything and everything to trade. She chances the woods on a few days when the sun warbles out. But she's reluctant to forage too deep, her first winter without Gale. He never did show her how to recast those snares, _can't have it both ways_. His handiwork languishes now under a wintry blanket, rabbits growing fat and slow, tantalizingly out of reach.

She sees Peeta only twice, at a distance in the Town, coming or going for supplies. He hasn't taken Sae's stew, not since the Tour.

"He gets this way," Sae says, when Katniss makes some offhand comment about how long it's been, even since before the storms.

The answer hints at hidden history. The most obvious question: "How long have you been taking it?"

"Since the beginning," Sae says, with a sad smile. Katniss thinks back, to what could be considered the beginning. His Games, perhaps, or his Victory Tour.

"Did he ask?"

Sae chuckles, stirring her stew, forever stirring her stew. "No, quite the opposite. But I needed the money, after Haymitch." A name Katniss hasn't heard in years. She recalls something about geese, him needing someone to tend them because he couldn't even tend himself.

But she follows the other thread, still focused on Peeta. "So, what did you do?"

"I just took it." And yes, Katniss can see it, Sae doddering past a bristling Peeta, an old woman even back then, too frail for him to do anything but let her have her way, his door never locked. Sae adds, "My soup is good for what ails ye."

* * *

><p>Katniss steps in to the Victor's Village for the first time in months. In her hand, she clutches a sack of stew. Peeta hasn't asked, but Peeta's going to get.<p>

He doesn't come to the door at her knock, off somewhere in the bowels of the house, perhaps, doing whatever it is he does all day. She should leave it and go, as she always has before. But then she thinks of Sae, at the approach that worked, the only way to breach his walls. So instead, Katniss palms the door handle, finds that it opens soundlessly, spilling her into the kitchen beyond.

She steps in, hesitant, not wanting to alarm him. Warmth bathes her face, and she's reassured by the gleaming countdown on the oven, a sign that he's probably here somewhere or back soon.

She's unloading the sack that Sae packed when she hears footsteps on the stairs.

"Hey, Sae, how…" Peeta's mouth snaps shuts when he sees who has braved his inner sanctuary. It's telling, that he expected Sae. But it's not Sae, not like he was expecting, not at all. Katniss turns to find him watching her, his hair dark and disheveled from a recent shower, the collar of his shirt askew, as though he'd thrown it on in a hurry. His feet are bare.

She feels like a voyeur, like she's here in this place where she has no right to be. The stew is unpacked now, she doesn't have anything else to do with her hands, and so she turns to leave.

"Wait," Peeta says, and she hovers with the screen door half open. He strides over to the counter, to a device, touches a button. It hums to life, the drone of a mosquito.

"What's that?" She's wary, as though it's a snake. They don't have many machines in the Seam, the projectors being their most fancy equipment.

"Heater. Bit chilly in here." She inadvertently brought the cold in with her. "You don't need to bring me more stew." He's gruff, doing that thing again where he tries to push her away.

She raises her chin. "I know."

He snorts a laugh, amused at something. Then he says, "Would you like some? There's more than enough."

Her thoughts are a myriad of colorful butterflies, fluttering, cluttering too fast. Curiosity rears, instinct warns, Gale's disapproval flares. She thinks of the other Seam woman. Is this how Peeta does it, wines and dines? Entices, woos with the promise of food? But then she remembers him with Finnick, with Johanna. She thinks about how he eats alone, on a table meant for twelve.

He's had the opportunity to entice her before. If anything, she's surprised he's offering at all.

Before she can speak, the timer on the oven dings, as if in emphatic _yes_. The sound cuts the tension, and they both smile at the coincidental timing.

"The oven has spoken," Peeta says.

That does it. "Okay," she agrees. Something unclenches in her gut.

"Grab yourself a bowl." He pats a cabinet as he slips on an oven mitt, rusty from years of use. She cracks the door he's indicated, scanning hesitantly for a bowl that looks to be the right size. There are so many, all shapes and sizes. Too many, for just one person. This house was originally stocked for a family.

As she's pulling a small bowl from the bottom shelf, Peeta creaks the oven open. Heat and scent hit her like a branch to the face. Bread. He's baking bread. She's taken back many years, to the last time she and Prim were in the old Mellark Bakery, Prim's face against the glass.

"Oh, and can you grab the salt? It's in the pantry."

She guesses correctly that the slim door next to the gleaming icebox is the pantry. When she opens it, she almost drops her bowl. For despite its small outward appearance, the pantry is as big as her bedroom, maybe bigger. She steps in (there's room to step in) and sees shelves heavy with rows upon rows of supplies, plump sacks of flours, sugars, spices, dried meat, fruit, and a hundred other things she can't name. This sight, combined with the smell of his heavenly bread, makes her head light. What he has in here could feed two or three Seam families for a month.

She tarries too long, looking for the salt, because he comes to check on her, clearing his throat. When he meets her eyes, his mouth is turned down, guilty. He reaches around her, almost brushing her arm, and grabs a jug the size of a water pitcher.

"It's overkill, I know," he says apologetically, hefting the salt. She looks away from his bicep, which shifts beneath his thin shirt. "Everything the Capitol sends is just so…big."

Everyone has seen the wagon, laden with supplies, that lumbers from the train to his house, once a month. His Victor's winnings, bought with blood.

Katniss follows him back into the main kitchen and eases herself to sit quietly at the table, caddy-corner from him, as he pours them milk, cuts bread so soft it slices like a pat of butter. For a moment, she feels guilt about her family's own meager fare, them waiting for her back at the house. But then she forgets everything when she takes the first bite.

"Oh," she moans around a mouthful. She's forgotten how _good_ it is. Better than she remembers, even, so fresh it melts in her mouth. Peeta seems pleased. She eats two whole pieces before she remembers the stew, which Peeta has ladled into her bowl.

"Sae spoils me. She, too, gives me more than I need." His thoughts are still on his pantry, at the look on her face when she saw it. "It's all more than I can even use."

Katniss had been thinking the same thing. "Then why don't you sell it?" she asks, her tone more blunt than she'd intended.

Peeta's eyes shoot up, brows raised. He says, simply, "I tried."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I tried to sell it. I tried to give it away." He's looking at her, something in his face.

"To who?" This can't be right. From what she's always heard, he refuses to barter with his Capitol goods. She's even heard Gale grump about it sometimes, on days when they still have to go without so that Prim and Posy can get their fill.

"To anyone," he says. "At the General Store. At the Hob. I tried everywhere, for years. I still try." She's never seen it, can't believe it. It can't be true, that this cornucopia of food sits, untouched, in this expansive pantry, slowly rotting. "They won't take anything from me. None of them, Town or Seam. Believe me, I've tried."

It can't be true. But the more she thinks about it, the more she can see it. The District folk are proud, particularly in the Seam. They'd think the price of blood paid for these goods is too high. Even if they starve. She's done it herself, when she refused to stand in line with the other women at Cray's.

She remembers the day Peeta's train arrived back at District 12, the final stop on his victorious procession. Everyone was lined up to greet him, like cattle.

He smiled and waved…

…and no one waved back. No one smiled. No one from the Town, no one from the Seam, not even his family. Such a thing had never happened before; the Peacekeeper protocol didn't account for this.

But he just kept smiling, kept waving, smiling so hard that she could feel his smile etched into her own cheeks. If it bothered him, the silence of his fellow citizens, even his family (they wouldn't look at him), he didn't show it. You would have thought he was still in the Capitol, waving to his legions of female fans, who fell all over themselves, reaching for whatever piece of him they could get.

_Psychopath_, they whispered, Townie and Seam alike. _Murderer_.

He just smiled and smiled and smiled.

Then he retreated to his fancy new house, rarely to be seen or heard from again.

Six months later, only a few weeks after his first Victory Tour, the oven at the Mellark bakery exploded (gas leak), killing everyone inside, including his entire family and a handful of early-morning customers. Such a tragedy, the town cooed, but Katniss sometimes wondered if they missed the people or the bread. They'd had to wait several months before the Capital could arrange for another baker to relocate from District 4. His bread was coarse and heavy and nowhere near as good.

No one asked Peeta to take on his family's mantel. He didn't volunteer.

Sitting here now, Katniss remembers the painted-on smile on Peeta's face as he'd stood before his district. She remembers the pack he'd dropped in the mud the day that Bo attacked him, how it was likely as full as when he'd started.

"They took your coin," she says.

Peeta's spoon clinks. "What?"

"The other day, in the store. They let you pay for their purchases."

"Oh that." He waves the thought away. "A fluke. It could have gone either way. You tipped the scales, putting your rope down like that."

This is the moment where she should ask why he ignored her. But she's beginning to understand, this stigma he has. How he of course wouldn't want it to transfer to her.

"Then I'll help you again."

"Help me how?"

"With your extra food. I'll sell it. Or trade it."

Peeta's face goes really blank, a vast ocean. "You would do that?"

"It's what I do."

He's quiet for a long time, considering, thoughts flitting as they sip their stew. "I don't think that's a good idea," he says at last. He won't look at her. She can sense him closing off, getting ready to walk away, don't do him any favors.

"Why not?" She reaches for something, anything.

"We shouldn't…" Peeta mumbles, and he's staring down at his bowl, spoon clenched tightly. He's not going to say more, this wall they always reach. But this time, it's not good enough. Katniss knows what it's like to go without.

"People in this district are starving. They're _starving_, and you have more than enough food. You _have_ to do something."

"So I'll try again. Maybe if I—"

"No," she blazes. "This is the only way. You said it yourself. You've tried. They won't take it from you. But they'll take it from me."

Peeta's staring at her now, his eyes intense. There's a spark of something in them. It almost looks like hope. "You think so?"

"Yes," she says. No one has to know where it comes from. Katniss trades with all walks of life. This will be no different.

He frowns. "But when they realize the food is from me…"

"We won't tell them. Greasy Sae has family in District 7. We can say that we've established a new trade route with them."

He's looking at her closely, measuring her face. "Are you sure? If you get caught…" He doesn't have to say it. She knows what the penalty is when it comes to Victor's winnings.

"I won't. I've been trading at the Hob for years."

"I…don't know what to say." She can tell he's weakening, the wall almost breached.

"Say you'll do this. I know we can do this." She likes how the _we_ sounds. "We just need to figure out how to…" Katniss trails off, not sure what she's asking.

Peeta seems to understand. "I can bring it to you, bits at a time. Your booth at the Hob, right?"

She feels a brief dash of surprise that he would offer this, that he's aware of her second job. For a moment, she considers it. Then she thinks about Peeta stepping into the Hob, how everyone would go quiet, faces turned to him in distrust or—worse—refusing to acknowledge him at all, gazes that pass right through him. She knows what people would think if he approached her booth. What Gale would think, if he ever saw. If he ever heard. _People talk_.

"No," she says, shaking her head. "How about I pick it up here, when I come with the stew?"

He's quiet, processing her answer, understanding the implications. "How about a compromise? I'll walk you to the creek, help you carry the bags. They'll be heavy." He's warming to the idea now, leaning forward in his chair, more eager and interested than she's seen him in years, ever since that day he presented in school about his cake.

Her turn to consider. His idea is a good one. The creek is only a few minutes from the Hob. And from this direction, there's no path, so they'll be hidden from prying eyes by one of the few offshoots of the forest within the fence. It's unlikely they'll encounter another living soul, much less a Peacekeeper.

"Okay. We can try it."

"Good. Then it's settled. How about tomorrow?" It's almost disconcerting, how quickly his mood has swung, a far cry from their previous interactions. He practically bounces on his toes as he gets up to collect their plates. He's distracted as she helps him clean the table, load their bowls and spoons into the sink, where he shoos her away.

"Flour," he says, disappearing into the pantry, "salt, corn. We can parcel it up into smaller bags…" She hears things thumping and sliding, as he starts digging out stuff he can give away.

She feels out of place, their brief bubble of conspiracy having popped. "I need to be getting home," she calls. When he doesn't immediately answer, she steps back to the door, thinking of slipping out.

"Katniss, wait," he says, emerging back into the kitchen. "In the spirit of sharing wealth…" She watches as he wraps one of the extra loaves (a perfect, honey brown) in a paper towel and nestles it in his outstretched palm.

She recoils immediately. "I can't take that."

His smile is thin with irony. "Weren't we just discussing the fact that I have more food than I know what to do with?" The tone is light, but some of the warmth has drained out of his eyes. She thinks: This is what everyone does to him. Rejects what he has to offer. In their world, there's no such thing as gifts. Gifts are just a form of payment for something you want. Often something you're not supposed to have.

This bread is almost a message, like he's trying to tell her something he can never say. Maybe it's just _I remember._ Or maybe he's trying to say something more. The air is heated, charged, her cheeks too warm from the heat of the cooling oven. Or from something else.

He continues, almost a whisper, gazing into the past. "You needed it once. You were starving, and I tossed you a loaf of bread. In the mud. Like you were a pig. I've thought of that day a thousand times. Why didn't I just go to you?"

She's frozen, unable to comprehend these words that he's suddenly saying to her, after all this time.

"I don't need your bread," she repeats, stupidly, stubbornly.

"But I need to give it to you. Don't you understand? Human to human. Man to woman."

Her head spins, the doorknob digs, she's pressing against it so hard. This sounds dangerously close to something they say at toastings. He senses it as well, that he's pushing her too far, too fast, caught up in his euphoria about their shared plan.

"Please," he says again, more softly now. "A gift, for Prim."

She thinks about Prim's face, pressed against the glass. She takes the bread. It's still warm. She cradles it in the crook of her arm, like a child.

That night, the Everdeens dine on the first loaf of Mellark bread the district has seen in years.

* * *

><p>When she arrives at Peeta's the next morning, his door is already open, sacks stacked neatly on the porch. Katniss eyes the ambitious heap, which looks to be double what she expected to carry, heavy with flour and cornmeal.<p>

"Don't worry," Peeta says, rounding the corner of the house. "Look what I found." He's procured a miner's wheelbarrow from somewhere, settling it at the bottom of the steps.

Together, they load it, then she takes an experimental lift.

"Think you can you do it?" he asks, dropping in a final sack, double-checking the distribution.

"I think so." She'll make it work, driven by the look on their faces.

Then they're off, Peeta taking the first shift with the wheelbarrow. Despite the weight, she almost can't walk quickly enough to keep up with him. It's infectious, his mood, them motivated by shared purpose. Something feels different, bubbling beneath the surface, a whole world of possibility. For a while, they just walk, the wheelbarrow a reassuring rumble. The day is golden, sky infinity blue, the first tendrils of spring unfurling through fertile earth.

"Did they like the bread?" Peeta asks at last. Her thoughts range elsewhere; it's a moment before she can place what he's asking. _They_ being her family.

"Very much. Prim kept asking if the Baker changed his recipe."

Peeta huffs, shifting his grip. "He uses oats. Healthier, but also a bit more dense. Also, I don't know if he lets the dough rise enough. And the yeast could be a factor." He looks over at her for a second. "Sorry, shop talk."

"Maybe you could show him." Katniss much prefers Peeta's work, like biting into a cloud.

"Maybe." Almost like he's really considering it. Hope has taken root.

She wonders what he'd do, if she asked him something real. Decides to risk it. "Earlier, you called my bow famous. How is it famous?"

"It's not the bow, exactly." They walk. Peeta's quiet for so long that she thinks that will be it, whatever nerve she's struck here. "You just…you seem to always shoot so very straight, right through the eye."

"How do you know that?"

"My…father," he says at last, having some difficulty with the word, the first time Katniss has ever heard him say it. "He was very impressed with your marksmanship. Used to show me your squirrels."

She remembers trading with the Baker, the original Baker. "He was always kind to me. I saved him the best."

Peeta blinks away the past, taking a cleansing breath. She knows how it feels, to talk about someone you've lost. "So, why the eye?"

"It helps kill them quickly, quicker than the heart, even. And also, it's better to put the arrow where it won't matter later. I can't always do it." Her turn to babble, this thing that she knows best.

"Where did you learn all this?"

"My father." It's been longer for her, but it still twinges. She doesn't usually answer these types of questions honestly, even with Gale.

Peeta's quiet for a few steps, considering. "He taught you to hunt?"

"Yes."

"Who taught him?"

She's never thought of it before. "I don't know." She doesn't recall her father mentioning where he'd learned, maybe to protect his source. It's an interesting thought, forbidden skills passed down in secret, year after year, from master to apprentice. Or perhaps he'd taught himself. Gale certainly had.

By this point, they've started to hear the creek. A few more yards and they can see it peeking through the trees, swollen with snow-melt. Yet even after Peeta eases the wheelbarrow to a stop at the base of a birch, they linger, nowhere pressing to be. She watches as he stretches out his shoulders, rotates his wrists.

"It is a bit heavy," he admits.

Katniss looks over, to where she can just see slices of the Hob, weathered as old bark, because she knows where to look. "I'll be fine. It's downhill."

Yet still, they linger.

"Well," he says.

"Well."

Nothing more to say, not now, not yet, this tender shoot unfurling from the earth. It needs time and space and sun, too soon to know what it could be.

Katniss draws close, positioning herself. Peeta steps away, careful, always careful.

"Got it?" he asks.

"Yes," she says, although her forearms already feel the strain. "Thank you."

Peeta watches as she maneuvers away. "Thank _you_," he says, and he doesn't mean just for this.

* * *

><p>Katniss rolls into the Hob, wondering how she's going to position this with Sae. But Sae merely cocks an eyebrow at the treasure trove.<p>

"From District 7," Katniss says, lamely, and Sae's eyes twinkle.

Later, when the miners swarm their booth, bees to honey, Katniss overhears Sae tell them, again and again, "From District 7. Family." She doesn't even look at Katniss.

They trade for whatever the miners have, never quite enough. "It will spoil," Sae soothes, as she always does, when someone hesitates at the heft of a sack. "Please. You're doing me a favor. Don't make me throw this to the goats."

One by one, the miners take the sacks home to their families, to their children. Rory even shows up, to this place where Gale never lets him go.

"It worked," Katniss crows to Peeta the next morning when he answers his door, pushing past him to disappear into his pantry. He just stands, blinking at the clock. It's an obscene hour. Katniss pops her head back out. "What? Too early for you, baker boy?"

Peeta breaks into a slow smile, the dawning of a sun, then trots off to get her some fresh sacks.


	11. Chapter 11

The arrow thuds dully into a tree, a full meter from the doves Katniss had startled, now safely in the sky. Five of them, and she still managed to hit a branch. As the years pass, her aim is slower to return each spring, muscles slack with too many months of disuse.

She cranes up at the arrow, just out of reach. _If Gale were here_... His absence remains a hollow she cannot fill. She still needs him, needs her hunting partner. Wild boars and rogue arrows and a myriad of other reasons. But he's no longer offering even a part of himself, steering clear of her at the Hob and even suspiciously absent from family gatherings, claiming illness. Twice.

So she climbs, from the opposite side of the tree, where there's a bit more purchase. The rough bark chafes at her hands, at the scar on her thigh, as she hoists herself up the thick trunk, straining for one of its lower branches. The arrow taunts, quivering just out of reach. She further considers the geometry of the tree. If she can put her hand _here_ and stretch her foot _there_. She can and she does.

From this vantage point, Katniss notices details, patterns you can't see as clearly from the ground. The bushes in the area are thick with spring berries, plump and pristine. Too pristine, despite the delicate deer trails like latticework through the area. She's stretched to her full length, reaching fingertips to the arrow, when she sees it—a discarded jacket, black leather, the first hint of Peeta in the woods she's seen in months. She thought perhaps he'd stopped coming, this place where she goes.

Katniss hugs bark close and listens for a moment. No sound, no hint of the jacket's owner. Unease begins to burgeon. She frowns and shimmies back down the tree, arrow forgotten, wending through a maze of bushes until she finds the jacket again. Nestled in a crook of leather is a bowl of berries, glossy and dark.

Her head jerks up, scouring the area. Boot prints are everywhere here, weaving through the clumps of bushes, their leaves thick with the berries, plump and ripe, ready for the picking. So easy, to sever them from a stalk. So easy, to pop them in your mouth.

"Peeta?" she calls, breaking into a jog, trying to read the map left by his feet. "Peeta!"

She crashes through the forest. Bushes whip and snag at her skin, her hair. Everywhere she looks are more berries, like black pupils. Watching, waiting. She wends around trees and leaps fallen logs and surges down gullies and back up the other side. All the while, she's looking looking looking, expecting to trip over his prone form, skin pale, mouth stained red.

Instead, she barrels into a body that steps out from nowhere. It's him, it's Peeta, and he's still standing. He's steadying her with one hand. In his other, he cups more of the berries, juice dripping like blood. They smell sickly sweet, like death.

She slaps at his wrist, knocking them away. "You fool," she hisses, fear fueling anger. "That's nightlock."

Her hands frame his face, checking his pupils. They seem to have the appropriate amount of black. She's so close she can see the striations in his irises. His lashes are long.

"I know," he's saying. "I know." He grasps her wrists, lowers them away. He's intent on her face, fascinated by something. "I wasn't going to eat them."

Panic recedes and she finally registers. "Then why…?"

He's stepped back now, putting some distance. Yet still he regards her, nakedly, her hair askew, chest heaving.

"I harvest them, for something else," he says, absently. Then he seems to remember himself, pulling his gaze to the ground, unwilling to say more. They've come again to that point they still reach in their interactions, the chasm that looms. Her thoughts tinge dark, the uses to which nightlock can be put. Mother and Prim won't touch the stuff.

"What are you even doing out this far?" she snaps, adrenaline still boiling her blood.

"Varying my route." His mouth quirks.

She doesn't react, him repeating her words, from so long ago. "No, you're scaring off my game," she grouses, unfairly. The way she's been shooting, she doesn't deserve more game today, anyway. The few squirrels curled into her bag will have to do.

Tactfully, Peeta doesn't mention her earlier shouting and thrashing. "Sorry." But he doesn't seem sorry. He's bubbling with something.

"What are you really doing out here?"

Six months ago, Peeta would have ignored the question and been on his merry way. But it's been different, since they started distributing his food. He's been like a dandelion, slowly unfurling its face to the sun. She asks him questions, he sometimes answers them. So Katniss merely waits as he hoists his pack, shoulders those pieces of lumber she's seen him carry. Then he pauses and looks over his shoulder, right at her, eyes soft.

He says simply, "I'll show you."

Then he's off, picking his way. As before, he's oblivious to the softer patches of ground, boots unerringly finding every broken branch, every patch of dried leaves.

Katniss follows, a silent shadow to his juggernaut.

* * *

><p>Peeta leads her to a familiar part of the forest. The creek that wends sluggishly through town, eventually sluicing its way to her father's lake, grows wide and deep here, finally free of the confines of the fence. On its bank is a tree. She and Gale have availed themselves of this creek, of this tree, many a time, after a long day of hunting. A day like today.<p>

"The Hanging Tree," Katniss says, when they arrive before it. It's not a willow, not like in the song, but it's warped and wide, unlike its taller, thinner brethren that stand like sentinels. The ancient tree stretches across the creek, reaching toward the distant mountains, a place it cannot go.

Peeta seems startled. "What?"

Instead of answering, Katniss demonstrates, scaling the familiar knots in the bark until she reaches the bisection of the trunk. There, nestled in the crook, is a rope. Damp with dew, frayed here and there by vermin, but mostly intact, judging from an experimental tug.

She hefts the end to Peeta and drops down from there tree, joining him on the ground. He hands her the loop, and she leans against it, testing the weight. The branch above creaks but holds steady. When she lets the rope fall, they watch it swing, back and forth, until it finally stills a few feet above the water, a hangman's noose.

"The Hanging Tree," Peeta muses, getting it now. "Perfect."

He takes a few steps back, assessing the tree from other angles, then deposits his pack on a bank overlooking the creek. Katniss watches as he sets up the pieces of lumber she's seen him carry, a tripod. More that fit together into a square. Then he unrolls a tube of what ends up being canvas, which he carefully molds to his base. She finally recognizes what she's seeing, these pieces of a whole.

It's an easel.

Peeta paints. Of course he paints. Everyone knows he paints. But she doesn't want to think about that. Doesn't want to think about the Games, them here alone in the forest.

"Do you mind if I…?" He's tentative, almost shy, indicating the brush that he's pulled from a long, thin box, like the one he'd dropped that day, with Bo.

He's asking her. He's _showing_ her, this part of himself.

"Go ahead," she chokes.

Peeta escapes behind his canvas. He darts glances at the tree, that gorgeous, gnarled tree. Katniss lets him work while she skins and cleans her few catches for the day, knife securely in hand, making use of the ready water. Then, when she's done, she stretches out on a rock, dappled with sun, and drowses.

She doesn't know what is, the crisp air, the tree, the lazy burble of the creek. The sight of his supplies has tickled something in her memory. Peeta has organized his brushes, his paints neatly before him, in descending order of size.

She blurts, "You _were_ skinning my animals."

It just hangs there for a moment, like the rope. Then Peeta makes some noise, tentative, like a question. She looks over and he's got a tube of paint in his mouth, still intent on his masterpiece. "When the wild hog got me," she clarifies. "I came down to the kitchen, and you were skinning my rabbits and squirrels." It all makes sense now, the knife, the blood, the organs in descending order of size. Peeta was doing her a favor, preserving her meat before it spoiled, her asleep for three days.

He pulls the paint tube from between his teeth, still intent on his work. "I'm surprised you remember that. You were on a lot of morphling."

"I thought you had…" she begins and then realizes where that thought leads, remembers what she'd thought, that dark night. _He killed them, he killed them all_. How easy it is, for the mind to perceive a horror that's not there. "Did I hurt you?" she ventures instead, remembering their mad scramble for the knife.

He looks at her then, a blink of blue. Then he jerks his head, dismissing the notion. "I wasn't worried about me. You're stronger than I knew."

She warms at this, settling back against her arms, folded behind her head.

"Do you come here often?" Peeta, asks. The more they talk, the more Katniss becomes sensitive to his ability to subtly redirect the conversation away from a delicate topic. In some ways, she appreciates it. She and Gale often worry things down to the bone, out of sorts for days.

"We used to." She can't remember the last time she and Gale had met up here. Probably not since before the mines. Peeta's quiet then, not missing the _we_.

"You and Gale?"

"Yeah."

She doesn't know why she does it. Maybe it's because Peeta brought him up. Maybe it's because of something else, them alone here in the woods.

"Gale asked me to marry him." As soon as she says it, she knows she's made a mistake, shattering the tentative camaraderie. Peeta doesn't look at her, shielded as he is behind his canvas, but the air becomes brittle. A cloud moves over the sun. She lolls her head to regard him more fully.

He continues to paint, never missing a stroke, as though she hadn't spoken. She doesn't know what to make of that, doesn't understand why he doesn't even ask what her answer was.

Maybe she'd dreamt it, her saying that part out loud.

At last, Peeta says, "How about a swim?" His voice is light, stretching his arms overhead, exposing damp patches. But there's something in his eyes, the way they won't quite meet her own. She doesn't think she was dreaming. This time, his redirection has been anything but subtle.

So they get ready to swim, because the rock has scorched her hot, and Peeta's worked up his own sweat. He removes his shoes and pants, leaves on his shirt and shorts. She feels underdressed in her camisole and underpants. She's swum like this a hundred times, but it's different this time. She doesn't know what they're doing, doesn't even know what they're doing.

"Ladies first," Peeta says, careful to keep his distance, always.

She reaches out a dead branch to the rope swing and draws it to a nearby rock, which offers a great vantage point. Then she launches, soaring for a blissful moment, a mockingjay, until a splash of reality. She comes up, shrieking and sputtering, because it's _cold_. Treads water for a while, keeping herself from floating too far downstream, until it becomes obvious that Peeta isn't moving from the shallow eddies, water lapping his calves. Between them, the rope has gone still.

"Your turn," she prompts. He's too far away, over there on the shore.

"Nah," he says, looking out over her head, toward the forest beyond. "You made it look so awful."

She assumes that he means her exit from the water, not the way she'd entered it. "It's not so bad. The water's a bit cold, but you get used to it."

He still doesn't move.

"What, are you afraid?" she teases.

"Yes," he says, serious, looking right at her. The water below and the sky above make his eyes an unbelievable hue. Then he remembers himself and looks down. "I, uh, don't know how to swim."

She frowns. The statement seems wrong somehow, like a fish out of water. But before she can pinpoint why, they hear a noise, something moving out in the forest. Something quick and large. Immediately, they're on alert, heads swiveling in tandem for the source. Katniss considers the distance to her bow, hungry bears not unheard of this time of year.

A figure emerges from the trees. It's Gale, dressed in his hunting gear and carrying his pack. He's breathing heavily, as if he were moving quickly. But he slows when he sees her in the water, Peeta on the shore. Something tucks away in his face, out of sight.

Any other day, Katniss would have been glad to see him, out here for the first time in so long. She would have been delighted. But now. Now is not good.

Peeta doesn't move, just watches Gale saunter forward, stop in front of the canvas. Everyone's quiet while Gale inspects whatever it was that Peeta had been working on. Above, branches creak in the wind. The hangman's noose stirs.

Katniss begins wading toward the bank, feeling too far away. Peeta has retreated to her nearby rock, settling onto it calmly, making himself small, the way he does. She's grateful that he, at least, seems to know exactly what to do. He looks carefully away from her, again toward the hills.

Gale's posture is bow-tight, his fists clenched, and his face darkens when she emerges from the water. Under his gaze, she feels naked, thin clothing clinging in all the wrong places. Her skin pebbles at she clutches at herself.

"Gale," she warns, the first to speak.

"You ready to go?" It's a question, but she knows he's not really asking. She can feel the answering anger flaming her face. He doesn't own her. Doesn't have any right to march her out of here as though she's a naughty child, plucking her away from Peeta like she's Posy.

But she knows better than to react. One spark, and this whole thing could become a blazing inferno. Gale is armed, his throwing knife but a reach away, tucked into his boot. Peeta is easily within its range.

"Yeah," Katniss agrees. "We should go."

It's eerie quiet as she gathers up her clothes, then the warm pelts arranged neatly in the sun to dry, stuffing them awkwardly into her pack, fingers like thumbs. Gale stands tall and firm, between her and Peeta.

She draws back on her shirt, her pants. They're hot now and stick to her wet undergarments. The trek back will not be comfortable, in more ways than one.

Then, they walk. Retrace their path, leaving Peeta sitting there alone, on his rock. She wants to say something to him, anything, but he won't even look at her, not once, retreating back into himself. She feels sad, water slipping through her fingers.

* * *

><p>Katniss and Gale walk and walk, until they can no longer hear the creek singing to them, until the birds begin to bustle again, no longer disturbed by the splashing and shrieking. Then, some unseen signal, they stop. They drop their packs, and Katniss leans her bow carefully against the nearest tree.<p>

"I heard you scream," Gale says, gruff. It's the last thing she expected him to say, the only thing he could have said that would have changed anything. She softens, seeing how this could have looked through his eyes.

"The water was cold. That's all."

"That's all, huh?"

"It's not what it looks like."

"Good," he says. "Because it looks like the Victor brought you out here to have his way with you. It sounded like he was hurting you. It looked like—"

"Peeta would never—"

"Never what?" Gale explodes, kicking out at a tree, silencing the forest. "Never murder a girl? Never debase her corpse?" The words feel like blows, memories long buried. "He's a killer, Katniss."

She raises her chin, looking him dead in the eyes. "So am I. So are you."

He shakes his head and scoffs. "Of animals. It's not the same thing."

"Isn't it?"

"No. You _know_ it's not. We kill because we have to. To survive. Because if we don't, our families will starve."

"He had to kill, too." Kill or be killed.

"Maybe. But he had a choice. A choice about who he killed and how. He could have run from the Cornucopia. Instead, he ran toward it. Mellark is a _murderer_."

She just shakes her head. "The Capitol—"

"_No_." Gale almost yells the word. His face is frightening. "Don't blame this on the Capitol. The Arena doesn't change a person. It merely exposes who they already are."

"You're defending the Capitol? That's rich."

He doesn't take the bait. "And you're defending _him_? I don't get it. Why do you even care? What has he ever done for you?"

That is the true question, the one she hoped he'd never ask. The one that explains all of this, the reason why she was drawn to Peeta in the first place. The reason why she can't let go of him now.

"He saved my life."

That brings Gale up short. "What, when that hog got you? I saw the wound, you wouldn't have died." She doesn't ask how he knows that Peeta was the one to help her. She's getting the impression Gale might know a lot more than he's let on. _People talk_, he'd said. And really, she'd left a trail of blood.

"No, not then. A long time ago."

"What are you talking about?" He's baffled. This is one story she's never told him.

"When our fathers died. Those early months when we still hadn't figured out how to get food. When your traps were always empty and my arrows never found their mark. We were starving, Gale."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying he gave me bread. He risked a beating by his mother to do so."

"He gave you bread." Gale's voice is flat.

She raises her chin. "Yes."

"All this for a loaf of bread?"

It's not much, a crisp loaf in the mud, melting in the rain. It's not much, but it's everything.

"Yes, I guess I am."

Gale stares.

"So now you're his little Seam slut."

His words slap her full in the face, almost bringing tears. Gale knows how much she despises the women from the Seam who sell their bodies for scraps. Knows she'd rather die than join them. And she might have, had it not been for Peeta.

"I thought you _like_ Seam sluts." Her voice cracks, despite the vitriol she tries to infuse, the first weakness she's shown. He hears it and knows he's gone too far.

"You're not…" he starts, softer now. "You're better than this, Katniss, better than all of us. So much better. What were you thinking," he pleads, "letting him draw you like that?"

She doesn't understand. "What do you mean?" Peeta had been drawing the tree, the Hanging Tree. With its branches reaching forever for the hills. She'd seen it.

"No, Katniss. He was drawing _you_. You, with your knife and your pelts. Even the blood on your skin. It's sick. It's wrong."

It's not possible. It's not. Peeta hadn't even been _looking_ at her. Yet doubt twists her gut. She hadn't always been looking at Peeta. Out of respect for his privacy, she hadn't looked at his canvas, angled away from her, a wall. She thinks of the nightlock, how it might make for the perfect shade, the perfect viscosity for blood.

"I didn't know. Gale, I didn't know."

He's peering deeply into her face now, as if looking for his reflection in the surface of a pond. Sees something there, the truth perhaps. But there's nothing for him to latch onto, nothing to change their course. He knows he doesn't own her. He knows it better than she does.

"It's him, isn't it?" he asks. She knows what he's asking. The reason why she won't marry him.

"It's not like that." And it's not. It's not that simple, not that cut and dry. Not a choice between Peeta or Gale, between a hunter and a killer, between the course her life should take versus the unknown path. Peeta doesn't want her, anyway. He's made that consistently, crystal clear.

"I hope it's worth it, Katniss." She's never seen him cry, not even the day where they buried their fathers' coffins, empty. For a second, she thinks she might. But he swings on his pack, gathers his bow. Then he pauses and squints back at her. "If he hurts you, I'll kill him." His threat rings true, an arrow finding its mark in her heart. And then he trudges away, making noise, like he never does, too upset to consider where he's putting his feet.


	12. Chapter 12

Stew bubbles merrily on the stove. Katniss watches it roil, then plucks another pan from a nearby rack. She hefts it for a beat, considering, then drops it, whoops. It lands on the floor with an ungodly racket. Perfect. When it settles, she stands and listens, the house beyond.

Still, nothing.

No response to her knocks, no response to the waft of the stew, no response to her excessive clatter. No hint of life. Perhaps Peeta hasn't heard. Or perhaps he's refused to hear.

She's worried.

It's the second time she's tried his house that Peeta has been suspiciously absent. He didn't respond to her earlier knocks, so she pushed inside, letting the screen slam, clinking and clanking as she reheated his stew. Yet even after its pungent aroma wafts to the far reaches of the house, it doesn't reach Peeta.

She hasn't even seen a hint of him in town or in the woods. Laying low, she suspects, giving Gale time to cool down, nothing further to fuel the gossip mill. Peeta's monthly supplies from the Capitol aren't scheduled for another couple of weeks, the shelves in his pantry now ribs on a skeleton, their former bounty smuggled throughout the Seam. No further excuse for them to spend time together.

A clock on the mantel counts down time, _tick tock_. The sound is maddening, never-ending. The sound reminds her she's all alone, here in this mausoleum of a mansion.

One by one, Katniss drifts through the rooms on the first floor. All sparse, all empty, filled with caricatures of what the Capitol thinks it means to live in District 12. Then she comes to a new door, one she hasn't noticed before, set into the side of the staircase, unassuming. A closet, perhaps, some nook tucked under the stairs. She turns the handle, curious, but it won't budge, the only door that won't open to her. She rattles the handle again, ear cocked to the wood. The sound seems to reverberate, some space beyond.

_Tick tock_, goes the clock.

Wandering farther down the hall, she finds the actual coat closet. Inside hangs a single jacket, a pair of boots lined up neatly below it, the first evidence of Peeta she's seen.

Eventually, she returns to the kitchen and sets the stew to simmer. Eventually, she leaves this place, other errands to run, other people to see, who want to see her.

Daylight fades.

* * *

><p>Later, errands complete, Katniss finds herself again in the Victor's Village, a last-ditch effort for the day. The house at the end of the street sits, dark and imposing. It's later than she'd considered. She should be on her way home, darkness encroaching, but something keeps drawing her back here. A hope, a promise, a chance. If nothing else, she should turn off his stew, likely now burnt beyond use.<p>

She lets herself in again and sees, with relief, that he's been here. A small lamp now sits on the counter, weak light a hazy halo. And the kitchen is impeccable, the way he keeps it, stew consumed and utensils cleaned, the pot dangling again from its hook. She wonders if, perhaps, he'd crept from behind the locked door, after she'd gone. _Tick tock_, still goes the clock.

"Peeta?" she calls, into the gloom, reverberating through too many empty rooms. The walls seem to hear, but they can't answer. She stands at the bottom of the staircase, staring up at the maw of a corridor beyond. There's a distant sound, from above, a shiver in her bones. A moan, it could be, and her mind goes places. It's stew day, after all. He might not be alone.

More sounds now, wild and animal, disturbing. She follows them up the stairs, silent and careful, to the room at the end of the hall. Through a sliver in the door, she can see a figure prone on the bed. The sounds are coming from him, lying face-down on his pillow, legs thrashing, arms clutching at the sheets, like he's drowning in his bed.

And he's alone. So very alone.

"Peeta," she says, creaking the door open and taking a step inside. He thrashes, oblivious, muttering something in sleep. She says his name again, more loudly, chancing a few more steps into the room. Something is wrong, all wrong. He wouldn't want her to see this, in the grip of whatever this is.

As if in response, he surges to a crouch, facing away from her, toward an elaborate headboard. His hands are still desperate, grasping for something. He's wearing nothing but a pair of dark shorts, look away, focus on his face.

She hovers next to him for a moment as he stares, sightless, at some invisible vista. His expression is blank, horrible, eyes dead. For an unsettling moment, she's not even sure it's _him_, not sure that this is Peeta with her in the room. His skin is tinged white in the half-light of the rising moon, a ghost of himself.

She's seen what she needed to see. He's here, he's safe, and now she should go. Right now.

But as she turns to retreat, Peeta twists, lunging toward her, lightning-quick. She can't do anything but throw her hands up to try to fend him off. But he's too big and too strong, and she's up against the wall, her skull slamming so hard into the wood that stars explode.

"You're not her!" he shouts, hoarse. "I know better, you can't fool me." His diction is garbled, teeth bared, eyes glazed and crazed as they rake her face, pupils blown wide by the night.

She tries to tell him—_it's me, it's Katniss_—but his forearm across her throat has stemmed her air. She can't speak, can't breathe. The only thing that comes out is a choked hiss, which seems to enrage him further.

"Liar!" he snarls. "You're a filthy liar, a stinking mutt, a coal-sucking whore…" He goes on, a litany of ugly words that she would never expect from those lips. In this moment, he's all Victor. She can't see Peeta anywhere. Feeling the darkness close in, she claws at his arm, but it's like clay against stone.

She thinks: Gale was right.

She thinks: The Victor is going to kill her.

Kill her like he killed the others. But she can't die like this, can't let Peeta do it. It would break him, beyond repair. And then Gale would kill him. In the forest, where no one would know. Maybe leave his body hanging from their rope in the tree.

A split second, she thinks these things, and then she's throwing up her knee, hard as she can, harder than she'd intended, a reflex. With a cry, Peeta releases her, buckling. She joins him on the floor, coughing like a miner.

They lie there for a while, just breathing.

"Katniss?" Peeta says, and she can tell by the way he says her name that it's really him, released from the clutches of dream, of madness. He's wide-eyed and awake at last, lolling to look at her.

The moment he sees her face, he shoots up. Looks around wildly, eyes finally landing on something near his bed. She can't see what it is, obscured by the breadth of his bare back, but it hums when he touches it. Not a light; they remain shrouded in gloom.

Then he's crouching before her, his hands flitting to her shoulder, her face.

"I've hurt you," he breathes, frantic, one hand gentle on her cheek, so warm.

"No, no, it's okay." She waves him off, sits up, propped against the wall. He curls away, to the bisecting wall and slumps down to just look at her. He's so lost, with his hair all sleep-tousled, sweat-soaked. He looks like the younger version of himself, the one she'd watched in school.

It's then, for the first time, that she looks down from his face.

"Peeta," she gasps.

Her turn to shift closer, alarmed, worried that he's hurt himself somehow in the scuffle. For his skin is marred and puckered across his shoulders, his chest, down his stomach. She dabs at him tentatively for a moment, expecting her hands to be sticky with blood.

But these lines, they're dry and withered, more ancient than the scar on her leg. Her fingers skim this story on skin, trying desperately to read between the criss-crossed lines, to understand what it all means. She thinks back, to his Games, but doesn't recall anything like this. None of the other Tributes had gotten close to touching him. Not like this. This is something else. Something deeper and darker.

After a while, Peeta catches her searching hands, stilling them, cradling them between his own.

"Why are you doing this?" he asks, his voice wavering like a child's. In his eyes, she sees the gentle boy he once was. The boy who risked a beating for some bread. Who always had a shy smile for her when they passed in the halls. That boy isn't gone, he's still in there somewhere. He's as close as he's ever been. Twin moons in Peeta's eyes, just staring at her, pale and afraid. Always so afraid.

"Why?" he asks again, and she knows he's not just asking why she's still here. He's asking so much more, like why she's come to him, time and again. Why is she helping him distribute food? Why is she still trying to be his friend, despite everything he's done to drive her away? Despite everything he's done?

She can't answer that. Not in words, she's never been good with words. Her eyes flit to his lips. They're chapped.

But before she can show him, why she's doing this, Peeta shoves up and away, digging in a nearby drawer for a shirt, which he throws over his head. Covering himself, closing himself off from her. From whatever this was. From whatever this could have been, a moment dissipating like a nightmare.

"I said no to Gale," she says, an answer to a question he hadn't asked. It's important, that he know. It's the most important.

Peeta's expression fractures at the name, no sound on those lips, eyes still round with the moon. With effort, he turns his face to shadow. "You should go." He's trying to gather it all back to himself, his casual indifference, his armor.

This time, she doesn't listen to him, doesn't let him scare her. She knows better now, having seen his cracks, literally visible on his skin.

"No," she says, standing, stepping closer, backing him against the bed, itching for him to do something, anything, to make her leave, if that's what he really wants.

"Please," he begs. "I don't want to hurt you." He remains very still, holding himself in, holding himself back. Everything in her yearns. She's seen that little baker boy again, the closest he's ever been. She just wishes there was something she could reach, something she could touch.

"Go," he whispers, a final gasp, staring out his window at the moon, alone in the sky. He's a statue. He will not yield.

After a moment, she does as he asks, as he's always asked.

She goes.

* * *

><p>"It's Gale," Prim calls from the door, and Katniss, standing almost-naked in her room, is immediately sour.<p>

Gale has taken to dropping by after his shift. For no reason that she can see, just stopping to say hello before he heads home for dinner. She's not sure what he's trying to do. Checking in on her, maybe, making sure each day that she's alive, now that he knows she's made a deal with a devil.

Their conversation is inane, stilted, and he never stays long. She misses their easy camaraderie, the hours they used to spend in the forest, talking about everything and nothing. Now it's all how was his day, how was hers, did she catch anything.

Today, he's later than usual, and she's already started drawing her bath, thinking he wasn't going to show. Now, her water will get cold. She's grumpy as she throws back on her clothes, leaving her hair long and loose.

"Katniss," he says, the moment she steps into the kitchen. "You'll never guess what I heard today…"

He trails off, interesting thing apparently forgotten. He stares.

Her first idle thought is that she's somehow made him uncomfortable, with her hair down like this. He's rarely seen it outside of the braid. Few people have. But then he goes very still, the way he does when he's watching an unsuspecting animal edge closer to a trap. Emotion wipes off his face, leeches from his eyes, leaving behind hard coal.

Her face. He's staring at her face.

And on her face is…

"Gale," she warns in a low voice, hoping to calm him. But to no avail. Without a word, he turns and slips out of the house.

Her Mother and Prim look over from where they're trying to make themselves scarce in the living room (nowhere else to go), curious at hearing the screen door close again so quickly.

"Katniss?" Prim asks, alarmed, as she rushes past, back to their room, grabbing what she'll need. Her jacket, her boots. Katniss doesn't have time to fill them in. There's no way to warn Peeta, and there's no one else to warn, either. Because no one else would care.

"Stay here," is all Katniss says. Then she's off, following Gale into the night.

She'd seen the bruise for the first time herself, in the mirror. From Peeta's nightmare, one of his elbows or fists must have caught her in the face. An accident, she hadn't thought a thing of it. She told Mother and Prim that she'd gotten into a tussle with a tree.

But Gale knows better. And in a way, he's right. But he's also very, very wrong.

She's only a few minutes behind him at most, stuffing her feet into her boots as she goes. But these kinds of things, they take only a few minutes. She saw Gale grab something propped against their porch. She's pretty sure it was his pickaxe.

He won't do it.

He won't.

_If he hurts you, I'll kill him._

She tears through the wide corridor of the Victor's Village, pushing herself to run until her lungs burst, faster than she ever has before. Her boots, loose and untied, chafe against her ankles. She feels ungainly and slow and too late.

When she arrives at Peeta's house, light peeks from around the curtains in his kitchen. Her heart sinks. He's home, then. She'd hoped that maybe he wouldn't be, give her a chance to talk to Gale, calm him down.

Leaping on to the porch, she sees that the front door is ajar. That stupid door that Peeta never locks. Not even after Bo. Beyond, instead of silence, she can hear the sound of violence, the wet, suck of flesh impacting flesh.

She kicks the door open, surging inside, already notching an arrow on a spare bow, which she'd grabbed from her room. As she explodes onto the scene, both Peeta and Gale look up, startled. He has Peeta in a wrestling choke hold, strained up to his tip-toes. Both of them are breathing hard, faces red. Blood beneath and upon their skin.

They are a stark contrast—light and dark, Townie and Seam, fury and calm. Gale's arms envelop Peeta's shoulders, half a head taller. While Gale's features are twisted, brows drawn heavily down, Peeta seems utterly calm, completely still. His head is forced at an unnatural angle by Gale's choke hold, but his eyes are clear, bearing into her own.

Evidence of their scuffle surrounds them, overturned chairs, a broken plate near her feet, soapy water in the sink and splashed all over the floor. Peeta must have been washing up after supper.

For a moment, the only sound is Peeta's strangled breath.

Then Gale smiles. It's not the good kind of smile. "You Townies and your wrestling matches. Should have let the Seam kids in. We'd have shown you. But you didn't want to dirty yourselves."

Gale's tone is light, a teasing smile.

Katniss' bow doesn't waver. Her arrow points directly at Gale's head. His eyes drop to it, once, and then back to her face. He doesn't believe it, her aim.

"It was an accident, Gale."

"So I'm right," he says. "It was him."

"Yes, but he was asleep, having a nightmare, and I got too close. It was my fault." Unthinking.

Gale's eyes become coal. This situation is a minefield. Before his father died, Hazelle was often "clumsy." And she'd just admitted to him that she'd been with Peeta when he was asleep. Innocent, but Gale won't see it that way.

"Your fault," he echoes bitterly. "That's what they all say."

"Gale—"

"This is how you did it, right?" Gale cuts her off, turning his attention to the crown of Peeta's head. His voice betrays tension, the effort he's expending to keep Peeta in place. Tendons strain in their forearms, the one Gale has wrapped around Peeta's neck. Peeta's arms are up, trying to pry him away. The muscles in Peeta's jaw flick, like those in a deer's hindquarters. But he remains calm, staring right at her. He doesn't answer Gale's question.

"The little girl, what was her name?"

Peeta still doesn't answer. His eyes never leave hers. They look almost desperate, pleading. As if trying to tell her something.

"What – was – her - name?" Gale roars, shaking Peeta hard at each word, like how a wild dog shakes its prey, to snap its spine.

"Her name," Peeta gasps between clenched teeth, "was Rue." For the first time, he looks away, closing his eyes, as if in defeat.

Little Rue, who had looked so very much like Prim.

"Rue," Gale echoes. "That's right, the one who was so very good at hiding." Katniss remembers the slight form twined high in slender branches. How the child's frame had withered with each passing day from lack of food. Thin wrists. The shock of hair, streaks of premature white, bobbling on a thin neck.

Rue had been the last to die. It had taken him an entire day to find her, up in the trees. _I won't hurt you_, he'd said, with his face like an angel. He paced below her for a few hours (trying to wait her out) until his patience ran thin. Then he threw rocks the size of his fist, dislodging her at last from her perch. She'd fallen to the ground, where he could finally reach, and that was that.

Katniss closes her eyes, remembering what came after.

The crack of a Peacekeeper's whip, that's what Rue's neck had sounded like. Katniss remembers turning away at that moment, shielding Prim, holding on to her so tight. She couldn't watch. But she'd heard it, the sickening wrench. The thud of a slight body crumbling to the earth. And she'd seen the aftermath, a close-up of Rue's eyes, forever staring.

"Now you've hurt my girl." Gale's voice is velvet soft, yet uneven, like he can't bear the thought. "But you will never hurt her again."

Gale's eyes are electric, boring into her own. She knows he's doing this because he's afraid for her, because he doesn't want to lose her. He'll kill another human being if it means keeping her alive.

"I'll do it," Gale says. He's planning it already, using his calculating mind, the one that has contrived the most lethal of traps. He knows how to kill. He'd broken a buck's neck once, when he'd forgotten his knife.

Her bow, which had lowered by degrees, strains back up, resolute. "So will I."

They stare at each other, reading every nuance in the other's face, almost a mirror image, they know each other so well.

"Don't you understand?" Gale says, almost pleading now. "He was dead a long time ago."

She sees death in Gale's eyes.

"Do it," Peeta gasps out like a final breath, eyes dead. One of his fingers moves, a mere twitch.

"Do it," Katniss says to Gale, "and I will never forgive you." Her voice is ice. Peeta's finger twitches again.

"I don't know who you are anymore," Gale rants. "I don't know what's he's done to you, what spell he has you under, like all of his Capitol fangirls. Has he drugged you, is that it? Some type of brainwashing? What did he promise you? Unlimited food? Never have to go hungry again?"

It hurts, these flaming darts that Gale's throwing at her heart. He knows, better than anyone, how to hurt her.

"Gale," she says a final warning. She's deadly serious. No games.

Gale's forearms tighten, prepared to deal that killing blow. Peeta closes his eyes.

She lets loose her arrow.


	13. Chapter 13

"Here," Peeta says, appearing above where she's sitting. He's holding ice against his eye and a jar in his outstretched hand.

"I don't need anything from you," Gale growls from where he's sprawled next to Katniss on the couch, bracing his wrist.

"Quit acting like a child," she says, her patience with him long gone, grabbing the jar and screwing off the top. "What's this?"

Peeta shrugs. "It'll help." It doesn't smell like one of her mother's salves, artificial and chemical, but she takes it. She remembers her leg.

Gale glowers as she holds out her hand for his, then mutters, "I don't want anything that came from the Capitol." They glare at each other, so much alike.

"Would you rather miss work tomorrow?" she snaps, and that does it. With a face of stone, Gale eases his hand into her palm. They both understand the consequences of him not showing up at work. Lost income is only part of it. The Peacekeepers demand proof of sickness or injury. And if they see his hand, they'll want to know what unauthorized weapon caused it.

"You'll need to keep this wrapped," she murmurs, inspecting it again. "Tell people it's just a blister. And somehow keep up your quota. My mother can give you something to help stave off infection while it heals."

Her arrow had embedded in his palm. She'd pulled it out while Gale bit down on a couch pillow, leaving a row of tooth marks in the supple leather.

"Don't worry," Peeta says. "The Capitol meds work wonders."

Gale doesn't acknowledge him, just keeps staring steadfastly at the tips of his boots. Katniss notices, however, that he begins to relax the moment she smears the salve on his skin. The three of them remain still and quiet as they work, Peeta handing Katniss supplies from a distance, the couch between them, and Katniss bandaging Gale's hand.

When she's done, pulling the last strand of gauze tight and tucking it under, Gale stands. "I'm leaving." He strides out of the living room, then stops to look back at her. "You coming?"

It's just like that day in the forest, when Gale had found them together. But this time, Katniss just raises her head. She firms her face. And she answers, a single word: "No."

"No?" Gale's voice rises, disbelieving, and anger tinges his cheeks. In her periphery, she sees Peeta stiffen. He doesn't move, but he's ready to.

She needs to end this, now, before they're at each other again. "Gale, I'm staying here. I need to tend to Peeta." Wrong thing to say, for Gale's gaze darkens further. "His head wound, Gale. You know, where you brained him." She goes for bitingly sarcastic, hoping that he'll snap out of this, whatever it is, that he'll remember that hey, this is her.

Gale's eyes flick to Peeta's head, as though seeing the blood for the first time. He doesn't say anything, merely turns and leaves the room.

She follows him into the kitchen, fairly shooing him out the door. "Go home. Everyone will be worried." And it's true, Hazelle will be worried. Particularly if she came looking for Gale and didn't find him at the Everdeens'. Particularly after the tale the Everdeens have to tell.

"Okay," he says, deflated, likely thinking the same thing. "Alright. I'll go. I'll tell them…something." He strides out onto the porch, swatting the screen door open as though it's a fly. "But if he ever—"

"I won't," Peeta interjects immediately, having drifted behind them. "And if I do, I'll let you kill me next time." He's smiling, ever so slightly. But his tone is dead serious. Gale measures him with his eyes.

"Count on it," he says, equally somber, and then he's gone. Katniss watches until he fades into darkness. Then she carefully closes the door. She locks it. She stands with her palm on the knob for a long moment, staring down at her hand.

It's shaking.

"Hey," Peeta says gently, too close. "Hey."

With that, she lets go. She's shaking all over, everywhere, uncontrollable. It was too much, too quick, and now she's finally reacting.

She shot a person.

She shot Gale.

She feels Peeta's hands on her shoulders, spinning her slowly to face him.

"It's okay," he says, asking her something with his eyes. She doesn't know what until he pulls her closer, into a light hug. Slowly, carefully, like she'll break. And she lets him. Guide her body to his, one hand resting lightly on her waist, the other coming up to palm the back of her head, fingers threading in her hair.

She doesn't move, doesn't reciprocate, just shivers. He's warm. His arms around her, his fingers firm on her scalp. Listening to him breathe. His inhale catches, once.

"Oh," he says, pulling back and staring. "I got blood in your hair."

Her hair, which has come unbound from the loose knot she'd tied it in as she'd ran, unsure if she'd make it in time to save Peeta's life. His _life_, and he's worried about her hair.

She refuses to cry, ever since she answered the door to two Peacekeepers, come to tell her that her father wouldn't be coming home. She would never let them see her cry, and then she had to be strong for Prim.

So she starts to laugh. Little giggles that roll into chuckles. And then she's braying like a donkey, staggering into the living room and sinking to the couch.

And he's supposed to be the crazy one.

It's infectious, this laughter, and soon he's sitting next her, head thrown back, howling at the heavens. They're crying, they're laughing so hard. They laugh and laugh and then. And then she really is crying because _I shot Gale_ and _Peeta killed Rue_ and Prim isn't here for her to be strong. She doesn't need to be strong anymore, she's been strong her whole life. And then she's snot-sobbing into his shirt, his blood mingling with her tears.

He's drawn her halfway into his lap, cradling her like he would a child, stroking her hair. "It's okay." He's comforting her, so carefully, gently, this killer of children, and she doesn't understand. Doesn't understand how the hands that are so gentle, so careful with her can be the same hands that wrenched Rue's neck. The same hands that drove a machete through Thresh. That hacked off Cato's head. So many names. She remembers them all.

As quickly as they came, her tears flee, the well runs dry, and in their place blazes a fiery anger.

"You killed them," she rails, her voice breaks as she flails at his arms, which have become vises, restricting and restraining, crushing the life out of her. "You killed Rue."

She can't have him touching her, can't have this monster anywhere near her. But he doesn't let go, clutching her to him so she can't escape. He doesn't flinch as her fists land on his chest.

"I'm sorry," he says, and he's broken and crying now, too. "I'm so sorry." A mantra, he repeats it forever, his lips in her hair.

She's bruising him, slapping anywhere she can reach, but he doesn't let go. He's weeping and he's bleeding and she's hurting him and he's letting her. He's letting her bruise him, he's letting her batter him.

Wrong, it's all wrong. What he did, what she's doing. She's hurting him, she's _hurting_ him, like his mother. She draws back, burned, a trembling hand over her mouth.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I'm sorry." Her voice fractures, nothing else to say.

She pushes up, away from him, and stumbles in to the kitchen, stepping carefully over broken fragments, returning with a damp cloth. Peeta just watches her, head tilted back on the sofa, as she settles next to him.

"Now you," she says, and he just sighs. Gentle, careful, she wipes the violence from his skin, stroke after soft stroke. Washing away what Gale tried to do, atoning for her own sins.

Peeta focuses on her face, never looking away. His expression is uncertain, like no one has ever done this for him before. Like no one has ever taken care of him.

When the blood is washed away, she reaches for the jar and dabs her finger. The salve tingles on her skin. She swipes a thumb across Peeta's forehead. He inhales once, quick, like a gasp.

She's intent and careful. So intent that she doesn't realize how close they are, her face to his. When she's done, she looks down, at his lips. They're so close. He's just lying there, bruises and blood, so fragile. It would be so easy, to tip forward, to taste him. This time, he wouldn't stop her. She can feel it, in the way his limbs are loose beneath her, a surrender. He's tired, so tired of holding himself back.

He doesn't move, doesn't breathe. He just watches, always watches. Waiting, to see what she'll do.

This time, when she leans in, he doesn't pull away. He holds very still as she tastes his lips. They're soft and warm, yet unmoving. She pulls back, watching his wet mouth. His breath is erratic, almost panting. They both know she should stop. They both know this is wrong, that this can never go anywhere, he a killer of children.

But instead he gives a single, sob of a sigh, and it's like some weight sheds. His long lashes flutter shut, and he arches up in to her, making a small noise against her mouth, a plea. Gently, oh so gently, he parts her mouth with his.

And this. This is what it would have been like kissing him so many years ago. If he'd never been Reaped. He kisses her like he's trying to tell her something, words he can never say out loud.

_You_, his lips say, sucking on her own.

_You_, his tongue says, peeking out to find hers.

He kisses her slow and careful, as though she's a flickering flame, one puff could extinguish. Softly, gently, his fingers stroke her cheek, her ear, the pulse point on her neck, then down her arms, leaving sparks in their wake. Up and down and back up and down, like stoking a fire. She's getting warm now, heat unfurling from her middle.

They break the kiss, sucking in oxygen, the better to feed a fire. Then he's nudging her, tugging. She responds to his hands, lifting herself up and over, until she's straddling his lap, so warm. Her lips descend on his again. She holds his head, feeling the muscles in his strong, firm jaw.

They kiss and kiss and kiss.

Together, they blaze in an inferno of _want_ and _need_ and _you_. They kiss for hours, in the deep darkness, the eternal fire between them waning and raging, learning the feel and the smell and the taste of him. How he moves. The sounds he makes when she does _this_. Until she grows so tired at last that she peters out, asleep on his chest.


	14. Chapter 14

When she wakes, she's stretched out on the couch, cheek stuck to the warm leather, wet below her mouth. She nuzzles a bit, expecting to find Peeta a warm presence at her back. But she finds only cool air. He's no longer stretched out behind her. Raising her head, she sees that he's not anywhere nearby, not on the floor or in the armchair.

Peeta is nowhere.

The living room is emphatically empty, the only sound that stupid clock, like a frantic pulse. For a horrifying second, Katniss imagines dark, dire things. Peeta woke up and realized last night was a mistake, escaped off to the woods or behind that stupid locked door. Barricading himself from her, like he always does.

"Peeta?" she ventures, trying not to panic.

"In here," comes the response, an immediate relief. She drags herself to stand in the archway to the kitchen, blinking at this portal to another world, a kaleidoscope of colors and smells.

"Hope I didn't wake you," he says, handing her a glass. "Water?" And then his good eye winks.

Katniss guzzles the water, and gladly. She thinks of the night before, the reason she's so parched.

"Your head," she says, amazed.

"The Capitol does have its uses."

The morning is bright and warm, sun streaming from windows wide, painting Peeta alive and golden. She's never seen him like this, in his element. He's cooking her breakfast, an elaborate one, by the looks of it. She watches as he expertly maneuvers between various food stations, a complicated dance that he makes look effortless.

Despite the blood and the bruises, he's radiant.

"Taste this," he says, extending a wooden spoon. She does, and it's the best thing she's ever tasted. Her face makes him smile.

"Have a seat." He pats her usual spot at the table, which he's already bedecked with an assortment of plates and bowls in all shapes and colors, the fine china, the kind she hasn't seen him use since Finnick and Johanna.

Then he's off again, returning moments later with serving dishes balanced on every arm, heaping with all manner of food, much of which she can't name. He arranges it carefully, proudly before her. It looks amazing and smells even better.

And then, instead of sitting at his usual spot across from her, so far away across the table, Peeta scoots his chair caddy-corner from her, drawing close enough to nudge his knee gently against hers. He beams at her, so readily, and her cheeks grow warm under his frank stare, his eyes melted honey.

"I didn't know what you like for breakfast," he says, suddenly unsure. "So I made a bit of everything."

She doesn't know what to say, this cornucopia he's presented her with.

The oven dings.

"Oh," he exclaims. "I almost forgot."

He bounds up and disappears for a moment as he bends to extract a pan. When he returns, his cheeks are ruddy with warmth. He plunks down a final plate with a flourish.

"Are those…?" She almost doesn't dare hope.

"Cheese buns," he agrees, and his eyes are lit from within. "Hope you don't mind them for breakfast."

"I…" Her throat closes, tight, almost as if she's going to cry. She's overwhelmed, it's all too much. Last night, and now this. Her heart feels like it will burst. The tentative thing between them, for so long a delicate shoot struggling to survive, has blossomed into something vibrant, something real, something bursting with potential.

"Dig in," Peeta says softly, seeming to understand, and she does. Oh how she does. She tastes all of it, a bit of everything, these things that his hands have prepared. For her. "Sausage," he says, when she asks, not recognizing the pungent, spicy meat. "Scrambled eggs. Gravy. Pancakes." He names each dish as she points with her fork. "You put the gravy on the biscuits and the syrup on the pancakes."

She stares. "Where did you learn all this?"

"From the Capitol," he says, apologetic, but even the name is not enough to dampen the mood. It's part of him, that he's been there. "Each time I go, I try to remember the dishes I liked best, and then I experiment until I can make them on my own."

She's glad that something good has come out of him visiting there.

Her favorite remains the buns, the melted cheese stringing gloriously as she rips the soft bread in half. The taste of them, reality, is better than memory.

* * *

><p>When their plates are thoroughly scraped and all food thoroughly enjoyed, Peeta packing in almost twice what she can, Katniss settles back, more than satisfied, eyeing the oven's clock.<p>

"I hate to say this," she says. "But I have to go." She doesn't want to leave, will never want to leave again, but it's getting late and she's expected at her post. The Peacekeepers will check.

"You're just saying that to get out of helping clean up."

"Some of us have to work," she lobs back, grabbing a cheese bun for the road.

"I know," he sighs, the thought of work, of value, denied a Victor. He stands as she pushes back from the table and collects her plates for the sink. "But wait," he says. "Let me send you some leftovers. For your mother and Prim."

"Okay," she agrees. It no longer twinges, him offering her food she hasn't earned. She helps him preserve some non-perishable delicacies into smaller containers, accepts them stacked safely in a flour sack, the same ones they'd been using to cart food to the Seam. She'll think of something to tell them, mother and Prim, about where it came from.

Peeta holds the door open for her and follows her out onto the porch. The day is gorgeous and clear, nary a cloud in the sky.

Unexpectedly, he laughs.

"What?" She wants in, this thing that has made him laugh.

"I was just thinking, people should try to kill me more often." His eyes twinkle, a joke, but the idea douses her mood, just a bit.

"Gale was out of line."

"Hawthorne the hawk. That's what we always called him back in school. You mess with his people, he'd swoop right in."

Katniss has never heard that particular nickname, but it fits. Nobody messes with Gale's family, the Everdeen sisters included, it's true. "Still, he was overreacting."

Peeta cocks his head. "Was he?" His tone is sardonic.

She doesn't know how to answer this.

"In any case." Peeta waves a hand, dismissive. "He wouldn't have done it."

Katniss remembers Gale's face, so similar to her own. "I'm not so sure."

"I am. He was going for my windpipe, not my spine. Choking me out. Just trying to scare me. Believe me, I know the difference." His head cocks. "Still, it's what brought us together. Even the first time, with Bo."

She remembers. "You were so very angry with me." Everything feels so free free free, even her tongue. So many things to say. Now they have nothing but time.

Peeta's smile falters. "I was. Bo's not the kind of person you want to anger."

Katniss doesn't want to think about Bo, ever again. "Good thing I have you to protect me." She reaches out, touches the back of his hand. Because she can.

Peeta captures her wrist before she can retreat, bringing her fingers to his lips. "I hope I always can," he says, serious again, the way he gets sometimes when her words hit too close to some invisible mark. She thrills at the sensations—his honesty, the feel of her fingers feather-soft on his lips. "Will I see you tonight?" It's stew day.

"Tonight," she agrees, her eyes still on his lips. This time, he takes the hint, and eagerly. He kisses her thoroughly, gently, tenderly. He kisses her like she's everything, like he'll never stop kissing her. But he eventually does have to stop kissing, has to let her breathe. Everything good must come to an end.

"Tonight," he repeats. "We have things to talk about."

Her pulse quickens, this potential. "Yes," she says. They have so many things to talk about. Years of things to talk about.

For a moment, she thinks he won't let her go, his hands on her waist. But he leans in for a final peck, a promise, and then sets her free. As Katniss leaves the Victor's Village, she glances back, once, to see him, the most beautiful thing she's ever seen.

Watching her, always watching her.

He raises a hand, a farewell.


	15. Chapter 15

Katniss floats through the day.

She sits in her booth in the Seam square, and everything is different, like she's born anew. The day is gorgeous, her people are lovely, life is full of possibility. The Glade siblings hoot and holler their way to her, and she gives them all an extra penny, a sweet, and a smile.

Greasy Sae spells her at the appointed time—"What's got you in such a tizzy, girl?"—and Katniss practically hops-skips-and a'jumps off to the woods, setting them awash with music when she's far enough out, mockingjays responding eagerly to her trilled whistle. She challenges them with a complicated medley, conducting a swelling chorus of many-part harmony, her best work ever.

Despite all the hubbubaloo, the animals haven't retreated, and her arrows don't miss. She nabs the fattest of rabbits, salivating at the thought of fresh meat in Peeta's capable hands. She hunts her fill, her pack laden with a veritable feast, and then she carts it all back to Sae.

Even the sight of Gale at the Hob at the end of the day isn't enough to dull her light. She marches right up to him, this final business. "I need to talk to you."

He eyes her, then swivels away, bandaged hand curling around his drink. Looks like he can still use it just fine. "Nothing to say."

"Then you can listen." Eyes all around the table are on her, on Gale, waiting to see what he'll do. She meets some of the gazes, Thom and Merl, her friends as well as his. For a long moment, it seems like Gale is truly going to ignore her, let her stand there forever. But then Thom elbows him, hard, and Katniss mouths a _thank you_ as Gale finally shoves back from the table. She follows his broad back, right out of the Hob.

They walk to a familiar spot. He spreads his arms wide, indicating their surroundings, the same place he'd proposed, symbolic. "Come to stick a knife in my ribs now?"

"Gale, I didn't mean to hurt you." She's not just talking about last night.

"You shot me with an arrow."

"You threatened to kill him."

"I wouldn't have killed him," Gale mutters, kicking at the earth. He's subdued, chastened, a far cry from the rage of the night before. "I was just going to hurt him. Hurt him for hurting you, eye for an eye." So Peeta was right. She thinks of Bo, the week he hadn't come back to school after Gale was through with him.

"He didn't mean to hurt me. It really was an accident," she grits out. She can never make him understand.

Gale just laughs, dark. "What do you want from me?"

Direct, the quicker to get this conversation over with. "Have you said anything?" She means to Thom, she means to Merl, to his crew, them together down there in the deep dark, so many hours to pass. Has he told them about what happened yesterday? Has he told them about Peeta?

"Not yet," he says. His eyes threaten.

"Please don't."

"Why, so you two can continue cavorting behind everyone's back? How long has this been going on?"

She thinks back."They tried to kill him last spring."

"Who?"

"Bo and his gang. I found them, beating him to death in the alley behind the old Mellark bakery."

"So it's been going on for nearly a year, is that what you're saying?" Sure, that would be his takeaway.

"No. I told you, it's not like that." She feels a niggle of guilt. Last night, it had been _exactly_ like that.

"Then tell me. What is it like?"

She doesn't know exactly how to tell him, how to put her amorphous suspicions into words. But she knows something, something is not right about all of this. It's like Peeta is two different people, the public persona versus the private one. Hot and cold. Fire and ice. Even to her, he's kind only when they're alone.

He's afraid of something, an animal cornered in a trap. She's sure of it.

"Just…don't tell anyone. Not Thom, not anyone."

Gale is looking at her as though she's a stranger. "Why are you trying to protect him? Have you forgotten he's a killer?"

Katniss raises her chin, looking him right in the eye. "I don't think he is."

He's incredulous. "We all saw what he did. We _saw_ it."

"And I'm telling you that we just don't know the whole story. Peeta is…" She thinks of his hands on her body, so very gentle. "Peeta can't have done the things we saw."

There. She's said it. She hadn't even dared to think it before but it just comes out. How right the words feel on her lips.

"Why, because you don't want them to be true?"

That's not it. That's not it at all. She's frustrated, the words won't come. "He doesn't know how to swim," she bites out at last.

"What are you even talking about?"

"At the Hanging Tree. Peeta couldn't swim."

Gale's face darkens at the memory of that day. "So he can't swim. So what?"

"We saw him swim. In the Games. That's how he caught Cato."

Gale shrugs it off. "So the Victor lied. Wouldn't be the first time."

She presses on, grasping for something, anything. "He was willing to let you kill him last night."

Gale just shakes his head. Shakes and shakes. "I don't know how he's tricked you. How you can possibly be defending him."

"He hasn't done anything. He wants me to stay away from him."

"That makes two of us."

She's tired of it, so tired, so many people telling her to stay away. Peeta finally asked her to come to him. Tonight. She raises her chin, firm. "I can't. I won't."

"Katniss, I've known you since you were born. I can't let him do this. I can't just stand by and…" He pauses, grasping for a word. "Watch."

"Then don't." She meets his gaze squarely, certain for the first time in her life, a standoff.

"Okay," he says at last, eyes turning down in defeat. "If that's what you want. I won't. I'm done."

It feels final, an epilogue to what could have been. Gale leaves her there, heading back to the light, to the Hob, to his crew, to Thom and so many others, who will help him through this.

She feels so many things, a curious mix of sorrow and yearning and relief. In some ways, she wishes it could have been different, that she could have been different. But she and Gale, they were never a love story.

Someday, Gale will meet somebody, the right somebody. And then he'll forgive her. She'll make him see, about Peeta. When she knows herself, after tonight.

* * *

><p>Later, she'll blame herself.<p>

* * *

><p>Perhaps she was distracted by the conversation with Gale. Or by her anticipation of being with Peeta soon, so very soon, at last. She should have been more vigilant, more careful, walking at dusk on a lonely road, the one that leads to the Victor's Village. A road she walks often.<p>

She hears the footsteps, of course. They're heavy, like Peeta, like he's trying to surprise her. Well, he's failing, miserably.

"You can't sneak up on me," she calls. "You walk like a rock, remember?"

The footsteps falter, close.

As she turns to find him, something hits her in the temple, like a rock.

Darkness descends.


	16. Chapter 16

Reminder: This story is rated M for mature.

Katniss slaps to the ground, a sack of flour. For a moment, air won't come, knocked clean out of her lungs. She can't see, something obscuring her vision, pressing against her face, her mouth, hyperventilating. When she can breathe again, her brain restarts. She focuses on details, the better to keep herself from panic.

Burlap, she thinks. There's a burlap sack over her head.

Peacekeepers, she thinks. They've taken her. Like she's seen them take others, others who have disobeyed, burlap sacks over their heads and guns to their temple. She's been so foolish, all those days sneaking under the fence. Those days spent distributing Capitol goods.

Sounds, she thinks. She can't hear the clatter of the mines, can't smell the bite of coal. No tell-tale hum of machinery. It sounds familiar. It sounds like the forest.

Twine, she thinks, cutting into her wrists and ankles, hastily applied too tight. She writhes and jerks, trying frantically to find any give in the bindings, some sign of hope.

At her movement, someone yanks the sack from her head, tearing. She gazes up at her captor through the snarled tangle that has escaped her braid, expecting to see the mirrored carapace of a Peacekeeper's helmet. Or the pinched face of Mayor Undersee, forced to mete out the punishment she deserves.

Instead, she sees another face.

A familiar face.

Relief makes her lightheaded. It could have been worse. So much worse.

But it's just Bo. Bo, the shopkeeper's son. Bo, the boy she'd gone to school with, she and Peeta and Gale. Bo contemplates her for a second, then turns back to whatever he's doing.

Katniss shakes the stray hair from her face, shoulders herself up so she can get a better look, assess this new threat. She tells herself that it will be okay. This is just Bo, some misguided attempt to get back at her for shaming him in front of his posse, probably just going to scare her, like Gale scared him. Waiting for his chance.

Glancing around, she sees that he seems to be alone. He also seems sober. All good signs, except. This has been _planned_. Premeditated. By Bo, who never forgets.

He doesn't look at her, just continues to pull items from a knapsack, arranging them on the ground. Survival gear, by the looks of it. Items you can get in his father's store—a lantern, matches, rope. Then a long, thin box, like one she's seen before.

It's twilight.

Not yet tonight.

She inspects the forest, looking for anything familiar. He's taken her somewhere outside the fence, likely using her exit nearest the Victor's Village. She thinks she recognizes a large tree, less than a mile in. Too far for anyone to hear her call.

But perhaps not too far for…

She begins to whistle, the first bar of the Valley song.

When she's only four notes in, she's flat on her back, head ringing with the force of a fist. Even so, a few mockingjay, lethargic in the late hour, pick up the melody. They both listen to the echoes fade, woefully inadequate.

Bo turns back to her, his expression fierce. "Don't do that again."

She hoists herself up, awkward with limbs bound together, spits blood. When she looks up at him, her face is set. There's only one way to deal with people like this. Show no fear. She's done it before, braved Bo. She'll do it again.

"What are we doing out here, Bo?" she says, voice light. They're best buds, pals. "Someone is expecting me."

Bo just smiles, a sneaking smile, not worried at all. "I know." With that, he draws a final item out of his pack. Something long and wicked, a tool that's forbidden in this district. He straightens, and he's standing over her with a machete, an image she can't expunge from memory.

In her mind's eye, Bo morphs into the Victor, both blond, both Townies. Both standing in a clearing with a machete, the meadow filled with the bodies of the other children he's killed, he's maimed, the light of the setting sun a blood-red halo.

She remembers, this machete. The stripes it leaves across the delicate skin of the face, the thighs. The sound it makes when it lodges in bone. The way it can gape smiles in throats, gouge eyes.

She remembers, seeing it plunge into privates.

This time, Katniss is not on morphling. She's not imagining it, this horrorshow.

She must show no fear.

"If you hurt me, Gale will _end_ you." Her voice is calm. Her voice is steady. Her voice could cut glass. "He'll drop you down a mine shaft. He'll hold you to the electric fence until your eyeballs fry." She tilts her head, looks at Bo with disdain, the cockroach he is.

But this time, her mention of Gale doesn't strike fear into his heart. It doesn't give him pause. Instead, his eyes gleam with a new mania. He just throws back his head and laughs, a hyena.

"Oh, I'm counting on it. Only, Gale won't be doing those things to me." He runs an experimental finger along the edge. "You see, I've watched the footage. Again and again. I know exactly how to cut you."

Footage, he says, what is he talking about? She doesn't know and she doesn't know and then. Then she does. There's only one type of footage he could be referring to. She's heard of it, people who derive perverse pleasure from the Games. She'd thought such folk confined to the Capitol.

Fear descends like a pack of wolves.

Casually, Bo points the weapon at her skin, like a teacher would at a chalkboard, hiking up her skirt. "Here," he says. "And here," he says, digging in hard enough to elicit a gasp. She looks down to see a dot of blood welling against her upper thigh, dangerously high.

She recognizes it now, this pattern he's outlined on her flesh. Has seen it before, on an oversized monitor, something she can never un-see.

She remembers: He'd marked them, all of his victims, dead or alive. A symbol.

"Everyone knows you've been consorting with the Victor." Spittle on her face. "So now, the Victor is going to do what he does best. He's going to mark you. Then he's going to paint on you. With your own blood." Katniss can only stare at it, this maw of a mouth saying such impossible, horrible things. "I'm thinking flowers," Bo says, conversational. The blade caresses the hollow of her cheek. "Like the ones on Rue."

She remembers: Flowers in flesh. It took him _hours_. Painstaking, precise hours, working over a corpse. Like decorating a cake at the bakery, blood for frosting.

Bo closes his eyes, savoring the sight, so far gone. All Katniss can think is—he's no longer sane. She turns her head. A splash of vomit joins her blood on the ground.

Bo doesn't even seem to notice, gone to another place, this fantasy. "And Gale will be the one to find you, out here in your woods. This is where you go, yes? You two lovebirds. I would so like to see his face. His stupid, coal-sucking face."

Gale won't hesitate. He'll be at Peeta's place so fast. This time, Katniss won't be there to stop him. Nothing will stop him.

"I'm afraid," Bo says, "the odds are not in your favor."

Katniss has seen this moment umpteen times, in the Games. The weaker child, defenseless before a larger creature. Crying, begging, please don't kill me please don't please. I'll do anything.

And she fractures. She's crying now, she's begging, she's cajoling, she's threatening. Nearby mockingjay perk at the sound, but there's nothing melodic for them to mimic, no message they can send. Bo just smiles a sad smile and chokes her with a filthy rag. Still, Katniss rages, screaming her throat bloody, thrashing ineffectively on the ground, trying to crawl her way away from him, a worm.

Bo watches her, eyes agleam. She makes it a few inches, then a few inches more, clawing herself forward in the dirt, heading for the nearest tree, her only hope. If she can make it to the tree, she'll be okay. This will all go away.

He doesn't stop her and he doesn't stop her. She makes it to the base of the tree, a gnarled root. Tries to drag herself up to stand, so she can face this.

She makes it to all fours.

She makes it to her knees.

"What a lovely idea," Bo says.

Then he's upon her, his weight pinning her to the tree while he wrenches at her arms. She can't move, can't breathe, can't think. He's squeezing her, his bulk, against the bark while she resists him. He smells of stink and sweat. He smells wrong.

He laughs. He's _enjoying_ this, her struggle. "I always knew you'd be a fireball."

She doesn't understand it, what he's doing what he's even doing.

She remembers: Sometimes, he used his weapon of steel. Sometimes, another weapon, himself, on male and female alike. She didn't even know, that you could kill someone like that. That you can violate them to death.

"There," Bo says, satisfied, and he retreats, with his foul words and his foul odor. Miraculously, she's unharmed. Except, she can't move. Not her arms or her legs or even her head. Bo circles the tree, and everything draws tight.

He's hog-tied her, to the tree.

"You and your ropes," he says.

She can't see him now, behind her.

It's worse, the not seeing.

"Hm," he says, at her ear. "Where to begin?" She jerks, but she can't move, the noose around her neck. She can feel it now, his fingers fondling her hair, caressing her braid. "Such pretty hair," he coos.

_You're sick_, she tries to spit but gags on the rag.

"So pretty. Such a pity, that it's in the way." And then he yanks, on her braid, on her scalp. There's a slice, one swipe of steel, and the braid falls free. It lands—a severed snake—at her feet. She can't believe this, this thing that he's done. It's really happening. He's really doing this, recreating the Games, a twisted fantasy role play.

"There we go. The better to see you." He cackles.

She knows what comes next.

She knows _exactly_ what comes next.

She remembers: Tributes splayed before him, clothes cut away. Their flesh a canvas.

She needs to get out of here, she needs to go.

_Climb_, she thinks. _I can climb_. In her mind, she climbs the tree, placing a foot here and a hand there. Climbs and climbs until she's twined in the highest perch, way up high where he can never go. She's safe up here.

"Now," he says, and she feels it (from very far away, up high), the tip of the wicked blade at her neck. It's cool, like ice. It slithers, down down down, tracing her spine like a feather, bisecting her shirt. She feels the cloth tear and give way, exposing her bare back.

Then he yanks, violent, and rips fabric free, clear of her skirt

It's cold. So very cold. She's shivering now.

"The better to see you," he whispers, again at her ear.

No, she thinks. No no no. She's not here. She can't be here.

Then there's a pause, a terrible, interminable lull. Behind her, Bo doesn't move. He doesn't anything. Perhaps he just stands, stares, savors. She doesn't know, can't see. She's high above, in the trees.

Her spine arches at the first cut, like a boar's tusk. And the second, the third. Stripes of fire here, there, and everywhere, until she's an inferno.

She's the girl on fire.

She burns and burns until the flames consume.


	17. Chapter 17

Something disturbs the dark.

She drifts back to the sound of battle. Somewhere nearby, a storm rages. Heavenly giants collide, a tussle of the gods. Nearby, something pounds, like a heart. A wet, sucking strike, bone against bone. Again and again and again, like someone getting their brains bashed in.

Then, everything is still. Everything is quiet.

The mockingjays hush.

The tree sighs.

She drifts, high in the boughs, like clouds.

Someone calls out in the darkness, her name. The name of the girl she used to be, before she was the girl on fire.

_Katniss_, someone says.

That's not my name.

She sags and tries not to move, tries not to breathe, the tree propping her up. Blood runs in rivulets. She's warm and sticky with it. The boar's tusk, that was nothing. This is something.

Maybe if she'll ignore it, this person, they'll go away. She's not here.

"Katniss," someone says. "It's me." Me, he says, as though that will mean anything. She can't recognize the voice through its panic.

"Look at me," he says, and she can't can't can't, eyes screwed closed, please don't hurt me. "Hey," he says. "Hey, it's me. It's Peeta."

Peeta, he says, the Victor standing behind her with his machete, stalking her, frozen in the tree. He's found her, he sees her.

She opens her eyes. Peeta Peeta Peeta is kneeling at her feet, making himself small and non-threatening, face tipped up to hers, as if in supplication. He's deathly pale, face leeched of expression, except his eyes which are bright with focus, fear, fury.

"I'm going to cut you loose," he says, but all she hears is _cut you_, and she whimpers and winces. Too sharp, too quick, and the fire returns.

She flickers.

"…need to touch you," Peeta is saying, voice low, voice calm. "Can I touch you? Please, Katniss, I need to get you free."

Not the Victor, she tells herself. Peeta. It's just Peeta.

She nods. A single tear escapes. He moves around the trunk, where she can't see, a hand trailing her arm as if to say, _I'm here, I'm right here_. "Hold on to the tree," he instructs, so very calm, and she does. She can't let go.

The rope at her wrists goes taught as he saws on it with something, she doesn't want to think of it. Then it snaps free. She keeps holding on and holding on, face buried in bark, even as he cuts the ropes that bind her wrists, her ankles, her neck. The tree holds her, the only reason she's standing.

"Here," he says, and hands her something soft. It smells like Peeta, warm. She holds it, not sure what to do, just stands there. So he helps her, slipping it over her arms, up over her head, averting his eyes. He adjusts it so it's draped over her front but not her back, bare and burning.

He's standing in front of her now, bare himself. The shirt she half-wears is his.

"Can you walk?" he asks, gently gently. He does not approach, does not touch.

She just stands and looks at her boots below her skirt, hair draped across her chin, a veil. It's short and ragged and falling in her eyes.

"Okay," he says. "Okay. I can carry you."

She used to see him sometimes, unloading sacks of flour from the train with his brothers, hefting it up over a shoulder. That's exactly what he does to her, lifting her like she's nothing. It's all she can do to swallow her scream.

Every step is a sear. Pulling, tearing. She can't help it, the gasps, the moans, the shrieks. Peeta murmurs soothing things, the babbling of a brook. She latches on to this, the sound of his voice.

It's night now, so very dark.

But there's no tonight.

The last thing she sees, her world sideways, is a prone form, a pair of boots. They leave the carcass there, in the woods.

She lets go.

* * *

><p>Birds come to devour her skin, jabberjays tearing at her flesh, voices everywhere. They won't let her sleep, nipping here, there, and everywhere, screaming screaming screaming. And the light above blinds, burning her roving eyeballs.<p>

Low voices all around, then her arms and legs are pinned again. A pinprick in the crease of her elbow, and the world fades again, thank you thank you.

She remembers no more.

She sleeps, dark and warm, like the womb. She sleeps nights, she sleeps days.

When she wakes, she wakes in her own bed, her own room. Prim's face is a pale moon, hovering above her in the dark haze. "Don't move. I'll get mom."

Everything hurts.

* * *

><p>Later, by cover of night, Prim on a pallet by the bed because Katniss can't be touched right now, Prim tells her the story. How Peeta had stumbled into their kitchen door, half-naked, Katniss a carcass in his arms, both of them bathed in her blood. How Gale arrived and shoved Peeta against the wall so hard his eyes rolled white. How Gale would have killed him, too, had not the butchered mess that was Katniss revived just long enough to croak a single word: <em>Bo<em>.

The name stayed Gale's hand, giving Peeta room to tell everyone how he'd followed a few notes of the Valley Song to find Katniss at a whipping post in the woods. Peeta's word against Bo's, of course, but it was enough for now, enough until Katniss woke up and could corroborate. They spent hours in surgery, Mother and Prim and even Peeta helping stitch the more simple cuts. Small, even stitches.

That's as far as they get that first night, before Katniss is shivering with fever, crying out at the memory.

She sleeps again. She sleeps nights, she sleeps days, her room a coffin.

* * *

><p>"Hey, Catnip," Gale says when she stirs again. His long frame languishes in a kitchen chair, pulled close to the bed. Prim tells her that he still drops by after his shift, every day.<p>

He's not done with her after all. He'll never be done with her.

"Gale," Katniss croaks. "What about…?" She can't continue, can't say the name. The thought of him turns her stomach, leaving her pale and trembling. Gale holds back her hair as she vomits weakly into a bucket.

Even so, Gale knows exactly what she's asking. His eyes are diamonds. "He's gone."

She's uneasy, it could mean anything.

"The body?" She remembers the prone form out in the woods, after Peeta was done with it.

"Body?" Gale frowns, thrown. Then, "Oh. No, he's not dead. Beaten pretty badly, from all accounts, but alive. Just no longer in District 12."

"How?"

"The Recruiters came through." Several times a year, the Capitol sends the Recruiters to _encourage_ strapping young men to become Peacekeepers. They head off to other Districts, never to be seen or heard from again.

All she can think is: He's not dead.

* * *

><p>Someone knocks and it's Sae with a serving of stew. Someone knocks and it's Gale, come to tell her about his day, his slice of normal. Someone knocks and it's a cadre of Peacekeepers, come to see why Katniss Everdeen isn't at her post. Mother tells them that she has the pox, very contagious. They take the Healer's word for it and stay only long enough to peek in at Katniss' feverish flesh.<p>

It's weeks before Katniss can struggle up from bed. Before she can stand in front of the small mirror in their bathroom, before she can lift her nightgown over her head on her own.

* * *

><p>Someone knocks.<p>

Three heads swivel, the Everdeens cleaning up from the evening meal, a stilted quiet. It's probably just Gale, but still they spot-check for contraband, habit. Mother sweeps some vials into a drawer.

"I'll get it," Prim says, and the other two keep playing house. When she turns back to the kitchen, her eyes are wide. "Katniss," she says. "You have a visitor."

A familiar frame stands in the doorway, the porch light cascades. At his feet are the cadavers of children, piled up, a mass grave. Her heart races, her blood boils, bile threatens. Prim, she needs to save Prim.

Prim, who's standing at her elbow. Prim, who's worried and saying her name.

Blink and the figure on the porch is just Peeta, standing alone and wary, no children at his feet. Her heart knows it wasn't him, the person who'd stood above her with a machete. But her body, her mind still aren't sure. The morphing muddled everything.

It's a long moment—too long—before she can breathe.

Peeta seems to understand, reading it in her eyes. He's always been able to read her. "May I speak to you?" he says. So formal. So distant. He's a million miles away.

It's another long moment before she can release the tin she's been drying, Prim eventually prying it from her. Then she walks, stiff, to where Peeta holds the door, giving a wide berth. He watches her closely, the way she moves.

"Can we…?" Peeta asks, furtive, inclining his head toward the neighbors, with their windows, so exposed.

Together, they duck around the house. Katniss leads him to the culvert, bone-dry, where they can do this in private.

Then they stand looking out toward the mountains, the space between them a chasm. For a long while, they just stand. It's been a thousand years since that night on his couch, since the breakfast.

You can't ease into it, a conversation like this. It's difficult, to talk about. Mother and Prim have tried, asking a few leading questions here and there, trying to fill the gaps, things only she knows. _It helps to talk_, Mother had said. _When you're ready_.

She might never be ready.

Peeta doesn't ask her to talk. He doesn't ask her if she's okay. He doesn't need to ask her these things, self-evident in the way she walks, in the way she holds herself in. The way she can't even look at him.

Instead, he says, "I'm so very sorry."

"Wasn't your fault," she mumbles, rote.

"That's the thing," Peeta says, whispers of words. "What he did to you, he did because of me."

There's no way to answer it, this truth. Sweat slicks, a sneaking sick.

"You didn't do this," she reminds him, she reminds herself. Peeta _saved_ her.

"Yet all of this is because of me." His thoughts are elsewhere, talking about more than just the attack. "It was supposed to be _me_," he says, too loud. She winces, can't help it, a reflex. His jaw is set. "He wanted me, all along. We should have just let him—"

"No," she says. She doesn't regret it, not for a second, the day she saved Peeta from a beating, or worse. They couldn't have known, how bent and broken Bo had become.

But Peeta's still agitated, not listening to her, pacing and aimless. "None of this should ever have happened." Something inside Katniss shrivels, the finality of his tone. "I told you before, you need to stay away from me. But you didn't listen. You make your own path, always have. It's one of the many things I…"

He stops himself, just in time. Before he does something stupid, like tell her something real.

"You need to stay away from me."

"I won't," Katniss says, feeling the first fire in days and days. It's not gone, hasn't been completely extinguished. "I know where you live." And she'll do it. She'll push open his door, again and again. If he locks it, she'll break it down with a pickaxe. He can't keep her out. She'd like to see him try.

Peeta regards her, the resolve in her face. Then he says, something new in his tone, "You can come all you want, but I won't be there. I'm leaving." He's talking to her in the same tone he uses for his Capitol interviews. So precise, so polite. So very distant and fake.

She feels ill, so ill, this sudden shift. "Leaving where?"

"Leaving District 12. I'm going to the Capitol."

Oh, just the Capitol. It's that time of year again, of course he's going to the Capitol. For a month, he'll go cavort in that circus, those snatches she's seen through the years. She won't like it, his fake smiles, now that she's seen the real thing, but she'll get through it. They'll both get through it.

"But you'll be back," she assures herself. He'll come back, and then they can see. The space will be good, even, after all that's happened.

Peeta turns away. "No. I'm staying in the Capitol, after. It's all arranged."

Katniss thinks of Finnick, she thinks of Johanna. "You can't stay," she says, stupid. "You're from District 12." She says this because it's the only thing that makes sense. People stay in their districts, period. It's always been that way.

He scoffs. "I'm a Victor. I can do what I want." She's never seen him so hard, so cold, so serious. Staring at her like he's daring her to contradict him, just see what happens.

She tries a different track, not rising to his bait, him trying to push her away, forever pushing her away. "You said," she says, voice small. "You said you'd tell me." _Tonight_, he'd said. They had so much to discuss.

He just shakes his head. "I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because…" he fishes about for a reason but it's like there are too many, sand slipping through his fingers. "I'm a Victor. I will always be a Victor. There's so much about what that means that you don't understand."

She remembers snippets of Peeta through the years, on the monitor. Tours, Games, surrounded by sinuous smiles.

"Then help me understand. I want to understand. _Tell_ me. What happened in your Games?"

Peeta's face doesn't change, but his eyes crystallize. This is the question he was waiting for, a ready response. "You saw them."

"What I saw was impossible."

He just looks at her, a long time, and she can read the truth in his eyes, in the slump of his shoulders. Then he says, the worst words: "It was real."

No, she thinks. It's not possible, these things Peeta did. She can't believe it. She can't believe it because there's no other explanation in the world that can make this better. You kill to survive, or to win some imagined glory for your district, ideas branded in to you since before you could talk. There's never a right way to kill people, but you do not kill people like this. No matter what, even if they threatened to kill him unless he put on a good show, even if they had a gun to his head, even if he had a psychotic break, the stress of the Games.

Nothing can ever make this right.

Gale had known, all along.

"I'm sorry," Peeta says, all he can ever say. He turns his face away, steeling himself. "And that's why we have to stop this. All of it. I came here tonight to say I'm sorry, for everything. I also came to say goodbye." He gathers himself up, whatever's left. "Goodbye, Katniss."

Then he's walking away. Peeta is walking away. She has to say something, anything, to stop him.

She says, "You didn't kill him."

He jerks, shocked. "What?"

"B-bo," she says, choking on the name. "You didn't kill him. Not before. And not now. The Victor would have killed him."

Peeta just stands and stares at her, intense, a thousand thoughts flitting, words that could be said but that never will.

"Goodbye, Katniss," he repeats, fainter now, the only answer he can give. The final answer.

Then he leaves. He leaves and she lets him, her mouth stitched shut, like her skin. Stands watching where he's gone, until Prim comes to find her, to help her back inside.

"What did he want?" Prim asks.

"Nothing," is all Katniss can say. "He didn't want anything."


	18. Chapter 18

Gray is the color. People are coated with coal, her food tastes of it, clouds block the sky. Gale still stops by, and his eyes are gray. Everything tastes like ash in her mouth.

Katniss doesn't eat. She doesn't hunt. She doesn't anything.

She hates herself, so much like her mother.

* * *

><p>Even so, life goes on.<p>

Katniss sits and tries to ignore the maelstrom of activity, regalia and supplies strewed on every available surface. Hazelle comes to talk flowers, which she's providing. Sae comes to talk food. Madge comes, bearing a pair of dainty shoes, her husband's finest work. Prim and Mother coo, and then Madge looks over, to where Katniss is curled into a corner of the couch, watching from afar.

"Katniss?" she says. "Fancy a walk?" Mother and Prim side-eye each other. They've been hinting for days about fresh air and sunshine.

"Okay," Katniss says, because even though it's probably a setup, it's _Madge_.

They amble the long way around the edge of the Seam, following the fence. Madge seems content to fill the silence, reporting on the latest news from Town. Delly is expecting her fourth. Soap is back in stock in the General Store. There's a gathering at the Grovedale's, you should come.

It's nice, to think about things that are other.

Inevitably, the conversation wends to the upcoming wedding. Prim and Rory will marry in the town square, right where children stand like sheep, waiting to be Reaped. It's symbolic, a new life together in a place that brings only death. In the cool of the evening, bathed in the glow of lamps (each family bringing their own), they'll be wed.

At first, Katniss had questioned the wisdom of such a celebration, so soon after a Reaping. It wasn't unheard of, but Katniss had always felt it a little crass, to celebrate a pairing after a different pair had been led off to die.

But as she listens to everyone talk—Hazelle and Mother and now Madge—Katniss sees how eager the families are to focus their attention on this event, rather than the alternative. The whole District is coming, or so it seems. Everyone knows and loves Prim, tagging along with Mother since before she could walk.

"Prim is going to be the most beautiful bride," Madge sighs.

"She is," Katniss agrees.

"Are you going to attend her?"

Katniss hesitates. She and Prim haven't discussed it since before the…incident. The original plan was for her to stand with her sister, yes. Now, she's unsure if she can handle it, up front like that, all eyes on her. The dress Mother had been working on seems too ephemeral now. And her hair. "I don't know."

Madge misses nothing but lets this one go. Katniss was never the type to relish public attention, so her reticence here isn't particularly unusual.

"We miss your meat." The way Madge says _we_, Katniss gets the sense that she's not just talking about her husband. She grows clammy, the thought that others are aware she's not hunting. That others might be aware of _why_.

"I haven't hunted recently."

"Okay," Madge says slowly, trying to understand the sudden frost. "Any particular reason?"

She seems genuine, like she really doesn't know. "Didn't my mother tell you? I thought that's why you'd asked me on a walk."

Madge stops walking, rounding on her. "Your mother? She didn't say anything. I just haven't seen you in forever. Please. Tell me."

It's so similar to the times she'd asked Peeta to tell her things, too. She remembers how it had felt. And maybe it will help, to talk about it. She trusts Madge. Always has.

So she forces it out. "I had an…accident."

"In the woods?"

"Yes."

"An animal?"

It's harder than she thought. To speak. To breathe. "No."

"Oh, Katniss," Madge breathes. Her eyes fill with tears, imaging the worst. "Did someone…?" She trails off, unwilling to say it.

"No," Katniss chokes. She can't believe she's saying them, these words. "It wasn't like that. I'm okay."

"Was it…" Madge begins, then seems to think better of it. Her gaze hardens, mind whirring. "Gale came to see my father."

Katniss isn't sure she follows this abrupt change of subject. "Since when does Gale speak to your father?"

"I don't know. I see him around, every now and again. I thought he was selling us game, but now I'm not so sure."

"What do you mean?"

"It was right before the Recruiters came through. We were all a bit surprised, at who volunteered."

Katniss doesn't say anything, can't say anything.

"But he didn't volunteer, did he?" They both know who _he_ is. Katniss still doesn't say anything, can't do anything. She feels faint, and her hands in her pockets tremble.

"Okay," Madge says, putting her arm around her friend. "Okay."

Madge always seems to know, when it's time to talk and when it's time not to. Katniss has never been more grateful for her friendship. They walk like that, finding their slow way back to the Everdeen neighborhood.

And as they walk, something begins to happen. They begin to pass other folk from the Seam, going about their lives. Some of them Katniss knows. Some she doesn't. They know her, though, every last one of them. They know her from her meat. Or from Peeta's food, the heaping sacks she's help distribute these past months.

And these people, they stop what they're doing. They look her right in the eye. They smile, they incline their head, they say her name, person after person. A mother with two children, workers carting supplies, teenagers kicking around a can. One old man, missing teeth, even raises three fingers, a sign of respect.

And Katniss walks, buoyed by Madge, through this procession of life, standing straighter and straighter, the breath of new life. These are her people. They do these things, not even knowing that she so desperately needs them, a phoenix rising from the ashes, buoyed by Madge and the goodwill of her people.

They arrive home at last, back to Mother and Prim, waiting in the window.

"You are loved," Madge whispers in her ear, giving her a careful hug. "Remember that."

* * *

><p>The next day, Katniss gets up from her bed. She covers herself head to toe in one of her father's long-sleeved shirts, her pants, her hunting jacket, collar popped up, despite the heat. She steps out of her bedroom, out of the house, off the porch. Mother watches her leave from the window.<p>

And she walks.

As she walks, she notes the way her skin pulls in new ways. How her arms don't swing quite as freely. But she can walk. So walk she does. She walks to the edge of the Seam, and then beyond. She walks until she reaches a creaky metal gate, the portal to another world. Then she walks through the graveyard of houses until she reaches the one on the very end.

She walks right up the porch steps, opens the front door and steps inside. She stands in the foyer for a long moment, listening to the silence. Nothing breathes. Peeta's not here. For all she knows, he might already have left, although she would have assumed he'd have to stay until the ceremony.

No, he's still here, although he's probably out in the forest, the light just right at this time of day.

Perfect.

So Katniss walks right up to a door under the stairs off the kitchen, the one she's never seen open, and turns the handle. This time, it's unlocked. It swings open easily, revealing steps leading down down into the dark.

Reaching around, she fumbles for the light, a single bulb that illuminates her path. Then, she descends.


	19. Chapter 19

As she steps down, she's briefly disappointed to see that the room is empty. Bare floor, bare walls. But then she rounds the corner of the stairwell and sees it—the fourth wall, nearly hidden in shadow, is stacked with canvases. Rows upon rows. Years of them.

This is what she was hoping she'd find.

The Victors always have a talent, something they produce for the rest of their lives, to remind the Capitol that they exist, to keep them from ever dropping fully off the radar. She'd been afraid that Peeta was sending his canvases back on the train each month, required by the Capitol.

And perhaps he did, perhaps he sent them his decoy versions of trees and plants, nothing real. But here. Here Katniss finds the windows to Peeta's soul.

For as she rifles slowly through the stacks, propping them against her thigh, she sees that Peeta has painted the Games. His own, and every one since, the years he's been forced to mentor, to watch the District 12 tributes die, up close and personal. One by one, she exposes pieces of Peeta.

Some of them are so beautiful they make her heart ache. Some so realistic, so bloody, that she has to turn away, bile threatening. Her own ordeal is to recent, too raw.

She knows she's violating Peeta's privacy, probing his memories. But she can't seem to stop, her movements becoming more and more frantic. Looking for something. She pauses for a long moment on a portrait of Rue, flowers—real flowers—fanning out from her body. Like a funeral pyre.

As she rifles through stack upon stack of canvas, delving deeper and deeper into Peeta's past, she finds something completely unexpected.

She finds herself.

Tucked back into a dark corner, covered by reams of baking cloth, she unearths canvas upon canvas of _her_. Dusty, linked by cobwebs, but she recognizes the face that stares back at her from the warped and broken sliver of glass above her sink. Her eyes, her face, her hair. In some, he's painted her smiling, hand-in-hand with Prim, perhaps walking home from school.

Then one, in the furthest reaches, of a young, dark-haired girl in two braids instead of one. A red plaid dress. She doesn't remember wearing it, but she remembers it on Prim, after Father had died. A hand-me-down, perhaps.

Her heart quickens, her skin is clammy, and she doesn't understand what this means.

And then she must hear some sound above because when she turns to look, there Peeta is, silhouetted in the doorway above the stairs. In the gloom, she can't see his face, but he's frozen, like a deer, about to startle, about to run.

"I thought you were leaving," she says, defiant, as he walks slowly down the steps, drawn inexorably to this place where she is.

"After the Reaping," he says, confirming. In one fist, he clenches a little black cube, not even trying to obscure it. The one she's seen many times before, when she visits. Or when others visit, Finnick and Joanna. It hums, there in his hand.

"Well, I won't say goodbye."

"Katniss," he says. "We can't do this." He says these words, but she senses the chinks. This time, he doesn't mean them. He _can't_ mean them.

"And you couldn't do _this._" She whirls, pointing to his painting of Rue, which she's pulled out and propped against an empty wall. His eyes flit to her handiwork, rising alarm on his face as he understands what she's done. "Or this," she says, indicating other paintings she's plucked out. Twenty-three of them, to be precise, portraits that now line the previously empty walls. Of Ana, Thresh, even Cato. She knows all their names, the faces of the children he supposedly killed.

Peeta has painted them all. By his hand, he's made them beautiful. Even brutal Cato, dead before he started. Under Peeta's brush, they all became heroes.

"And you certainly couldn't do this." She draws up her shirt, exposing her scars, so much like his.

Peeta just stands there, ringed by the faces of those he supposedly murdered, shoulders bow, face falls, limbs fall, curling into a fetal ball, and he _weeps_. He lets Katniss come close, lets her wrap herself around him, as far as her limbs will reach. Ruined flesh to ruined flesh.

"You didn't do this," Katniss chants and rocks him like a small child. "You didn't."

Afterward, when Peeta's cried out, years of tears, he stands, helping her up. He grasps her hand as though he can't let go.

"Come with me," he says.

She follows.

She will always follow.

* * *

><p>This time, he leads her to an unfamiliar part of the forest. One too close to the District boundaries, too wild for game. They pick their way slowly, carefully, through bramble and bush, following some trail only Peeta can see.<p>

He stops in a cramped clearing, the earth uneven here. Looking closer, she sees it's because there are five mounds of earth, shaped lovingly by an artist's hand. Graves.

"They're not here," he says. "Not really."

"Your family?"

"Yes." Peeta just stands, looking down. "An accident, they said. But I know better. There are no accidents."

"What do you mean?" He can't be saying what she thinks he's saying. He can't.

"Do you know what they do to Victors?" he asks.

Only that they give them a big, fancy house and more food than they can eat. But the way he says it, she knows he's not talking about these things. "What do they do?"

She can see he's not going to reply, this question, rhetorical, the answer something that cannot be spoken.

Instead, Peeta starts talking, something new in his voice, something she's never heard. Raw, honest, real. "Finnick and Johanna tried to warn me, what would happen if I told them no. But I hoped…" He closes his eyes, the memory. "I was so very popular, in the Capitol. Not like Johanna had been." Katniss remembers, his legions of screaming fans, a fury. "So I told them no. I was naive enough to think that would be the end of it, the Victory Tour over, back to my home I went. Six weeks. It took six weeks for them to decide."

Katniss knows what happened next, exactly what happened next. A gas leak. A fissure the size of a pin. Not at accident at all, that's exactly what he's saying.

"And Haymitch?" she chokes out, dread suffusing. The official story was that he'd finally drunk himself to death. They'd even run a segment honoring the former Victor, showing scenes from his Reaping, his interview. He'd been handsome, once.

"They killed him, too. His bottles were already filled with poison. They just added a bit more. I'm the one who found him." Peeta's gaze is in the past. "And that, Katniss, is why we can never see each other again. Why you need to stay as far away from me as you can. Those who are near me die."

So that's it. The reason why Peeta pushed her away, again and again. He's telling her, he's finally telling her.

"There has to be something we can do." Inexplicably, she thinks of Gale.

"There's _nothing_ we can do," he bites, immediate, final. "If the Capitol gets even a _hint_ that I care about you, they'll use you against me. It's already too dangerous, how many people know."

"They won't say anything." Not Gale, not Sae, not the good people of the Seam.

"They don't have to. The Capitol will find out, if they don't know already."

"How?"

"Do you know what this is?" He holds up his little black cube. "It's a scrambler." The word means nothing to her, so Peeta adds, "It prevents the Capitol's bugs from working."

Bugs, he says as though…

Horror blossoms. Katniss thinks of the Games, of cameras hidden everywhere, capturing the action from every angle.

"Yes," he says. "The Capitol has eyes and ears everywhere, even in the Districts. You think you're safe, ducking under the fence? You've never been safe. The Capitol knows who you are and what you do. They probably allow it, you and Gale, only because a little hope is healthy, harmless. Poach a bit of meat, right under their noses, lets us starve all the more slowly."

"But you go out, too." She doesn't understand, this thing he's saying, her world turned on its ear.

"That's because it doesn't matter what they do to me. They've already done it. They killed everyone I care about. Until now." His eyes on her, right on her. "If you die, I'll have nothing."

His eyes like that turn her skin to flame. He's saying something now, something important. He's telling her, how he truly feels, without saying the words. But there's still a deep, dark secret, something he isn't telling her.

"What about your Games?" The same question. The most important question.

Peeta's face doesn't change. He's ready for this question, always ready. "You saw them," he repeats, the same thing he'd said earlier.

This time, she's not going to let it go. "What I saw was impossible. You really expect me to believe that you—"

"Haymitch is _dead_, okay?" Peeta explodes, a firebomb. "He's dead because of my Games. That's all I can say."

"Not good enough. I'm already on the Capitol's radar. What does it matter if they have one more reason to kill me?"

"You really don't get it," he says, softer now, sorry. "This isn't a game. They _will_ kill you. But not just you. They'll kill your Mother. They'll kill Prim."

Thoughts slam into a brick wall. Prim, with her wedding so soon. Katniss feels it now, the fear that has coated her every interaction with Peeta. The reason he's been so cold, so harsh, fear frosting his every word. He's been afraid for _her_.

Fear is the strongest. You'll do anything for fear.

Katniss thinks, hard. "We could leave." They could do it, same as she and Gale have sometimes talked about.

"Leave where?"

"For the forest. Head out and just never come back."

He shakes his head. "They'd find us."

"Not if we—"

"They'd find us," Peeta repeats, forceful. "You and Gale, maybe they could ignore you. Spread the word that you'd gotten killed by a bear or a pack of wild hogs, and people would believe it. But not me. They will never let me go."

It hints at something, something deeper and darker. She thinks again of his scars, a story on skin.

"Let me just…get through these Games," he's saying. "There are people in the Capitol, people I trust. I'll talk to them, see what can be done. I just need more time." He tries to sound certain.

"Promise me," he says. "Don't do anything. Don't tell Gale." Gale, she thinks, one more person they could kill. "Please, Katniss, promise."

"Okay," she says because there's nothing else. "Okay. I promise."


End file.
